Reasons Why
by EvilWaffleS
Summary: Apollo considers suicide, when he can't go through with it, he dreams up an idea to test whether anyone will miss him. This isn't my usual writing style, but I hope you enjoy anyway.
1. Suicide Attempt

A/N so yeah, this isn't my normal writing style, more dark and depressed than the usual fluff I seem to write. But for a few reasons, which I wont divulge, I feel there is no better time to write this story.

Anyways, since this isn't what I normally write for, I hope to receive all the support I can get, and any constructive criticism will be welcomed. Also note, that while his motivations may not be as clear as they should be, I hope that the following chapters will explain how each person has influenced what he has become.

* * *

Not for the first time in his life, Apollo had fallen into a deep depression. Recently, people seemed to forget who he was, life had moved far too fast for him, and when he wanted people, they were never there.

Trucy and Phoenix were never around, Trucy was out travelling across the city every night, performing fantastic illusions taught to her by her uncle. Magic, or rather, her magic, had become a lot more high-class since she turned sixteen. Then of course, there was that new man in her life. Apollo didn't care much for the snotty arrogant teenager she had decided to date. But he was not entitled to comment, he was no relation to her. All comments about her safety would fall on deaf ears. This seventeen year old musician, who simply looked identical to Klavier, give or take a few inches and replacing those infernal guitars with a piano, was an arrogant, pompous prick. He was also very jealous, insisting that he was the one to drive Trucy to her shows and when closer to his house, across the city, that she stayed with him.

Phoenix, well, he'd become _involved _with the returning prosecutor, Miles Edgeworth. Apollo wasn't sure how he was involved, and he didn't get the impression it was romantically, more the closeness shared between very close friends, or siblings. Instead of re-training to be the world famous attorney that was expected to return to the lime-light within the next month or so, he'd become the smooth-talking prosecutor's 'pet'. Edgeworth dragged Phoenix across the whole world, taking him to all manor of events and conventions, just for the company. So Apollo had lost the only father figure he had ever known.

Ema and Klavier, well, they were _romantically _involved. Well, romantically may not be correct, she appeared in all the photos of Klavier looking as stunning as always. She was the one who'd kiss him when asked, appear at his side whenever he needed protection, but looked the other way when Klavier eyed up another girl. Apollo saw her almost as an escort to Klavier, they were fuck buddies, anyone who worked anywhere near the precinct could figure that. Happiness and emotional comfort came secondary to the "mind-blowing sex" to quote Ema. She pretended to be his lover in return for sex and gifts. Apollo wasn't jealous of Klavier for winning Ema's heart, he didn't really like her all that much anyways, it was the fact that in them pretending to be lovers, he had lost both the best friends he loved so dearly.

Vera Misham, she'd gone into therapy, getting her to talk was the main priority. She was there for two months, and in that time, Apollo had taken it upon himself to maintain her studio, tend to her plants and remove her fathers equipment and belonings, helping her to forget the past. Shame that when she returned, she returned a super confident young woman who was slightly aloof. Never even thanked him for his time. Was as bold as to accuse him of stealing some of her art supplies.

Kristoph, he was, and always had been a contributing factor to Apollo's mood changes. That man had been his inspiration to do well, had taken him and nurtured him to be a loyal dog, a pathetic cog in a well oiled machine which disguised a killer.

Family and friends from his past, reminding him of how his life was so screwed over, well they were enough to drive any human being into a violent depression. There was the woman who took him in, the foster carer who raised him until he was eleven years of age, she claimed she was a kind and friendly woman, in reality, she was driven to despair by the fact she couldn't provide for the children she had taken into her care, and had begun to neglect them. Apollo couldn't remember a time between the ages of five and eleven he even had a full meal. There was his friend from the home, a boy with whom he had grown, hiding a dark secret as he grew older and older, pretending nothing was wrong and being closer and closer to the boy so he wouldn't catch him out. His foster mother, treating him as second best when she had her own children. His younger brother and sister, his foster mother's they influenced his depression as well, both times. There was a girl in his life, way back when, who since falling out with her took it upon herself to make his life a misery. Finally, there was one final person, who influenced his life in such a severe way, he wanted to murder the person for what they did to him. This girl was like a sister to him, a passionate girl who no matter what, kept him inspired to keep working, then gave up on him when he needed it the most.

These thirteen people, individuals, they all changed and altered his life in fantastic ways, then destroyed him. Now they had influenced his decision to debate taking his own life.

-x-x-

Life had moved fast for him. Eighteen months ago, he was a fresh-faced boy with his face buried in a law textbook, living in a cardboard box of an apartment, funded by his college scholarship. He lived simply, vowing chastity and temperance. He never touched a drop of alcohol, never smoked as much as an menthol cigarette and was still a virgin and proud of it.

It sounds a miserable life, but when all you need to worry about is the occasional phone call to check in with your foster mother, what budget food to fill your belly with and your education, life was much simpler. Even though he was employed by Kristoph's law firm at this point in his life, he was still quite simply a Clark and a tea boy. He organised the books that people had finished reading, maintained the files and made Kristoph and his clients coffee on instruction.

His life had begun to change when he was promoted to actually being a protege to Kristoph. Kristoph had moved him out of his house (to which he had reacted unkindly) and it probably didn't help that he had continued living in that apartment, even to this rather depressing day. He was thankful however, that he had managed to pay for his cardboard box apartment and that it was still in his name.

Fast forward eighteen months, he was now one of the most famous lawyers in all of America. He was never left alone, and this scared him. He would make sure to point that out to someone when the time came.

-x-x-

That was why, for the twelth day, he was sat in his apartment, a notepad in front of him, the phone at his side, a kitchen knife within easy reach, contemplating what he had left to live for, and whether almost twenty-three years was enough to endure.

He was alone in the world. People were always quick to remind him of that, and now the demons in the back of his head wouldn't let him live it down.

_Just a single phone call, off someone who cares, that would make me feel better._

He glanced over at the knife in the wooden block, there was a glint, a mischievous glint from the blade. He shook his head, pretended not to see it. Not to be captivated by that beautifully tempting sparkle. He shivered as he decided upon swinging open the safe hidden under his bed. Here, he kept alcohol, warming stuff, that would inspire a fire in his heart. Kept out of site and out of the way unless he truly needed it, like now. He needed something to make him feel warm.

The way he felt right now, he had no friends, no passion, hated work, hated life and so distant from his "family" that for the only time he could recall, he felt truly alone. So alone, that human emotion could not assign a feeling for it.

Scotch. A favourite of both his foster mother, and the woman who ran the orphanage where he lived. He saw how it made them relax, before they drank excess, and either withdrew into their own haze deep in their shells, or flew into a violent rage. For him, he hoped it would simply silence his demons.

When you're afraid of the future. When you're afraid of being in the public eye. When you're afraid of being well and truly alone, you experience a fear so gripping that it eats into your soul. Couple with that the idea that you have no true friends or family to rely upon, you can understand those demons that were dwelling deep within Apollo.

He didn't bother with a small glass, which scotch is traditionally poured into, instead, he chose a cola glass, filled the glass half way and downed the entire drink without a breath. It burned, igniting all his throat and chest as it passed through, to replace the coldness that spiked his blood. He turned back a page of his notebook.

_Day 11: I will wait twenty-four hours. If I get a phone call from someone I truly care about, and who truly cares for me...I will banish this desire to play a dangerous game. Using that beautiful and ever tempting knife to put myself in a delicate suspension between life and death._

_Day 10: Today, while out, paparazzi approached me about another 'high profile' client. Yeah, high profile my ass! The woman I am defending is a whore. Nothing more. She turns tricks with more famous male clientèle, sells her stories to the papers, and has thus become rich from it. An escort, a cheap dirty hooker. These are my true feelings for this woman. She is yet another burning reminder that I am alone. After all, there was no Trucy at my side in the court, no Ema presenting the facts, no Klavier a mere 10 steps away from me, helping me discover the truth._

_This woman is guilty, I know it, and I don't want to free her, those who kill for money, like how she killed that film star just because he was supposedly a client who wouldn't pay up, deserve to rot in hell. I will sell my soul to the devil if I allow this woman to go free._

He kept turning even further back, till he ended up with day 1.

_Day 1: I fear all motivation is leaving my body, as if it is leaking out my body where I feel my heart has been pierced. Today was my twenty-third birthday. Nobody was there. I liked it when I was younger, that silent solitude and reflection time on your future, but now I am grown, all I do is look back at my miserable past and look forward to the future in the public eye. To be ridiculed for all the decisions I make, this is not the life I want to lead._

_Trucy was off with her boyfriend again, Phoenix in Milan, Ema and Klavier probably in some fancy hotel sipping expensive wine while they continue satisfying their grotesque sexual needs. I sit alone at the kitchen island, staring at a knife in the wooden block, wondering if all I've endured is worth it. Wondering if I should end it all._

"And I'm still wondering it now." He hastily poured out another large dose of scotch, throwing his head back and swalllowing the stuff as quickly as he could.

He could feel that haze from the alcohol already, and could hear the voice in his head.

"Apollo..." It mocked, in a ghastly jester-like tone. "Hey look over here Apollo." His eyes were drawn to the same knife that had been captivating him for twelve days now. "If life's so bad, why don't you end it?"  
"N-no." He whimpered.  
"Come on Apollo." The infernal voice drew out its syllables as much as it could. "You've had a miserable childhood...a miserable life to be fair. You've been thrown in the deep end and you hate it." The voice cackled. "You know what though? Where are those...friends..." it took especially long to draw out that word. "...family..." that one too. "...those you love, when you need them?"  
"Shut up!" The boy raged, standing up with such a force and kicking the chair back so hard that it landed a few feet away with a clatter, a clatter he never heard. "What the heck do you know!"  
"Come Apollo, calm down, why don't you come take a step closer?" As if mesmerised, he did exactly that, not before taking another large gulp of scotch, amber fire, as it were to him.

He was well aware he was talking to himself. Well aware he was letting those demons take over, after all, a blade doesn't speak.  
"You bastard." He slurred, swaying slightly from the alcohol. "But..."  
"I'm right aren't I?" The voice mocked. "They're not here! Twelve days you've waited! Twelve bloody days!" The voice got louder and Apollo gripped his head. "No phone calls, no visits...no friends, no family."  
"They're just-" he was about to reason with the voice in his head, but the voice was right.  
"They're just what? Hm? Screwing each other, miles away, hating your guts? Some friends and family they are!" The voice erupted into a mocking laughter. "Come now Apollo, they've worked out something's not right with you, surely. No person is that slow."

"So...what?" He hiccuped before continuing to slur. "They're...ignoring me?"  
"They don't want you here." The voice said matter-of-factly. "So...how about you come pick that knife up...huh?" Suddenly, it dawned on Apollo, the voice in his head wasn't coming from the knife, but from the block where the knives were placed.

He reached out to grab the handle, but closed his hand and pulled back. He turned away and clung to the counter, shaking himself to reality.

"Blade not your thing? Well...always have those medicines." The voice giggled.  
"N-no!" He shook his head.  
"In denial? ...Think about it. I'll still be here. Why don't you go vomit up that amber fire you swallowed?" He suddenly clicked on that he wanted to vomit. Acid was boiling in his stomach, he knew there was a reason he didn't enjoy the alcohol.

As he leaned over the bowl of the toilet, trying to vomit up that alcohol he'd poisoned himself with, he closed his eyes and reflected.

_The knife block – the voice in my head – it's right, if someone wanted me here, they'd have called, or stopped by or whatever to check I was ok. I've had no contact at all. Maybe I'm not meant to be in this world, twenty-three years and nobody has ever given me happiness. I don't think I can take it anymore..._

"I heard all that." The voice giggled as he returned to the kitchen, still drunk but now able to see in a roughly straight line. "Am I right?"  
"I..." He hesitated. "Y-yes. Nobody wants me here. I...I should die. Leave them in a world without me." He whimpered. "They don't care, and I'm miserable as fuck. So...I..."

Without the earlier hesitation he reached for the handle of the blade, the blade glinted under the artificial light, and somehow that glint matched the one he pictured on the voice in his head. Time seemed to pass painfully slow as he simply stared at this...tool. This tool could end his life, but it could also release some of the pain in his heart.

He picked his chair back up, and sat at the kitchen island, the blade lying in front of him. His notepad just in front.

_Day 12: Sick of life, I've decided to try and release the pain, end my life, I've deliberated long enough. Twenty-three years of hell, misery. I would like to detail all the reasons, all the people that influenced my decision to do this. Once I've made the first cut...perhaps I'll write more._

He looked at the clock, it was midnight, it's day thirteen officially.

"Forgive me" he didn't know who, or what he was saying that to, as he lifted the knife and pushed it into the side of his skin, halfway down the lower arm. He let out a little cry as the blade very easily pierced into his skin. Little blood poured from the wound. What little did flow out, flowed straight onto the notepad. Tears flowed down his face at the thought of his self mutilation.

He knew you were meant to write a full suicide note, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. He didn't think the people that had influenced his decision to end his life deserved to know what they'd done. He wandered that if he took his life, right now in this kitchen, when his lifeless corpse would be found in a pool of its blood.

He left himself to cry, making a few minor wounds on his arms once more. The blood that poured out burned his skin as it flowed across the counter and his notebook.

"Feels good." He whispered to himself. He moved from the counter and towards his couch, wiping his arm on the cushions to give himself a good platform to make that fatal cut without missing.

He ran the side of the knife along his arm, wanting to find the best point to end his life as quickly as possible, to watch himself bleed. He found this point and lifted the blade, moving it to the side of his wrist ready to drag it across.

He felt his muscles pull, to drag the knife over, but the knife did not move. Something in his head, that had been dormant throughout the entire argument with that voice that had on origin in his head but emanated from the knife block, had come to life.  
"I can't do it!" He cried out. Swivelling round and slamming the knife as hard as he could into the wooden coffee table. The blood poured off the knife, all over the coffee table. Something in his head took pleasure from it, seeing his blood pool on the table and drip onto the floor.

He sat, arms on his knees, weeping, allowing blood to cover his clothes, the wounds all spilling fresh blood onto his body.  
"I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it." He shook his head, tears and blood going everywhere. Six wounds, all on the same arm, was all he had made. Why was he bleeding so much.

-x-x-

He fainted.

He fainted after blood loss, clearly the failed patch up job he had done with some bandage he found in a cupboard had prevented him passing away due to blood loss.

During the time it took him to take a drink of orange juice and eat a slice of his stale bread from the bread bin, he had realised how his dance with death had made him feel revitalised once more. He felt a release, he felt like he had taken revenge on those who had hurt him in some weird, cosmic way. He had decided what he would do.

He would simultaneously take revenge on the people who had ruined him, left him to rot inside his brain, and to experiment to see how much the people really cared. If nobody truly cared, then that would be the end. He would not be as cowardly as to back away from death again.

He had planned it all in his head, while cleaning his body in the shower.

He would fake his suicide, make a few more cuts, leave the blood to drip all over the kitchen and living area, then write a message in his own blood on the wall. On the off chance, that someone would come and check on him of course. Then he'd make it look like he dragged himself out the front door for some more peace and hide in his old apartment, nobody other than him knew where it was, not even Kristoph who had secured this apartment for him, knew where his old one was, or that he had maintained the empty apartment for the last year and a half.

Cutting, he could see why people would become addicted. He'd packed a bag, found a few more bandages to bind his new wounds, found a jacket which was dark enough for blood stains to not show through.

He felt violently ill as he pasted 'You did this to me' on the wall in his blood. Five new fresh wounds bleeding on his other arm. He felt ill, but he bound them as tightly as he could, drank as much fluid as he could handle and grabbed his backpack, packed sparingly with a change of clothes and two day's supply of packet foods. All he had in his old apartment were a few tins and a few pots, enough to cook a half decent meal. He had a kettle, so he could stop by a random shop in one of the lesser-known part of town to pick up some other supplies. He removed his attorney badge and threw it atop his notebook, with the second bloodied knife, to show that he was no longer the attorney boy again, before setting off into the warm sunlight.

-x-x-

The route he took in order to avoid possible detection had took him an hour and a half to trek. It didn't help that his wounds were bleeding more profusely than he thought they would, but finally, he was there.

The old apartment, a minute little bed-sit, stank of damp and bed linen he had forgotten to wash, but he had power, he was comfortable, and he missed this rat hole.

-x-x-

It was almost a day before he woke on his bare mattress. Then it dawned on him.

_I forgot a note!_

And a new idea hatched in his brain, something that could help him with that tiny problem.

* * *

A/N so sorry this dragged on forever, I didn't intend for this to take so long, and I have had to split this into two, will post the other half in a little over a week.

Again, please leave reviews as I'm a little under-confident here.


	2. Phoenix Wright

A/N Ok so first of all, thanks for the amazing reviews and story hits, the support has helped me get over my initial fear of writing dark material for this site. Also, big hugs to my awesome friend and fellow writer HoKaze who was kind enough to read this chapter before I posted it.

Please keep up the support, each story/author alert, favorite and most of all review keeps building my confidence.

Purple Handprint bought my attention to a book I have never actually read, from which my original idea was derived, so I'd like to pass on a big thank you for that as well!

* * *

"Here it is." His body was very weak from the blood loss, and it didn't help that he had continued to cut, even in this apartment, away from the voices and finally relaxed. He'd managed to find some bed linen and give it a quick wash, while waiting, he had patched his wounds and found what he'd been searching for.

In a cupboard in the corner of the room, sat a small drawer on the inside, in this drawer was his old Dictaphone, the saviour of his college days, where he would often be too unwell to attend his lectures. A small device, roughly the length of his hand, with the USB connection still clean and plugged in, this would be perfect. He found an old laptop and exactly thirteen CDs, what he needed for his project.

_Project...barely the correct word..._

He ran to the nearest supermarket, insistently buying products in boxes that were progressively larger. The last person to receive the boxes-within-a-box so the special CD he had made for her would be in the smallest box. The first person to receive his box would be Phoenix, who, by his reckoning would be returning to his office within the next forty-eight hours. Just in time to receive the next box.

He felt so guilty, but the next morning, he carried the box down to the nearest post office and asked the lady behind the counter to mail it to the Wright Anything Agency, to a Mr P. Wright. He also remembered to check his old PO Box, which he had continued to pay for even after he left. He'd asked for all the mail that had been delivered there, largely junk, to be destroyed. It cost him almost all the remaining money in his wallet, he didn't want to use a cash machine if possible, as it would provide evidence he hadn't killed himself, but he might not have a choice, in his haste to leave the apartment he hadn't collected the spare money he had stored in a lock-box under his bed. So all he had was a twenty and any money he may not have collected from when he left his old apartment.

He pulled his jacket tighter around himself, despite being in the scalding summer sun, just in case someone could somehow, magically see the wounds he'd made. He'd run out of bandage now, so was having to let them bleed out and heal alone. The cutting had silenced that horrific voice in his head, even if he hadn't taken his own life. Perhaps that voice was hidden deep inside the blood cells he lost as he bled all over his kitchen counter, he wasn't sure.

At least buying those boxes had landed him with enough food to sustain him for a while, at the cost of ten dollars. He just hoped that while in his fragile mental state, his brain and stomach didn't care what he shovelled down his gullet. He'd also scored himself a very cheap bottle of wine, should he need help to summon that devious little voice to talk to him and keep him company once more, it seemed to like when he drank the scotch anyway.

He knew that faking his death was selfish, and writing, or rather recording, these custom suicide notes would drive a theoretical stake through the hearts of those he was closest too. But it was the only way he knew he could get the point across.

Cutting through the town, he located a cheap drug store, where he obtained a few more bandages and some hair dye. He'd manage to cut his own hair, very carefully and delicately after recording those messages, he'd simply run the dye through it and wear the seldom worn clothes he had on, and those he packed, and he'd be able to roam the streets without being noticed by the people who were about to receive a nasty surprise. A surprise that would alter their entire view.

As he returned home that afternoon, he put the kettle on, made himself some cheap ramen noodles, a cup of coffee and reached for the TV remote. For now, the voice was silent, and should it return, he'd already written his suicide note, so he could leave the Earth without fear.

-x-x-

He'd returned home from France yesterday, another unusual convention, although Edgeworth had explained they were merely in France to enjoy some music show, and to meet a friend. This friend was a detective, a wolf-like man. Shi-long Lang, if Phoenix recalled correctly. Being the early hours when he landed, he had chosen to check into the nearest hotel, call his daughter, who had answered hastily, said she was fine, and put the phone down. No doubt she was having fun with her boyfriend and didn't want to talk to dear old dad.

He'd returned to the office that morning around ten, upon seeing him enter, a young woman from the office opposite his rushed out clutching a large cardboard box, the box was plain, only details on it where his name and the address of the Anything Agency.  
"How unusual." He thanked the young woman before taking the box inside and placing it on Apollo's desk. "Hm...Apollo hasn't been in for a while." He noted, he could tell this simply by the state of the office, it looked like it had been ransacked by burglars, when in truth it was just Trucy looking for magic supplies.

He'd neatened up the office, read through all the other mail and made a few phone calls before even giving his unusual package a second glance. How ironic, he had ignored Apollo, and now, there on the desk laid Apollo's last gift to the man who'd abandoned him and he was ignoring that to. He'd only chosen to look at the package once he had grown bored of the television, the news was never his thing.

He'd shaken the box a few times, before laying it back on the desk and piercing the tape on the top with a pair of scissors. He'd peered into the top, expecting a new set of magic supplies for Trucy, packed tightly amongst those weird foam beans, not another, smaller box. He lifted this box out, and placed it beside the original, he was almost about to pierce this one, when he noticed it had a different address on it, with a name he did not recognize. _Some kind of prank?_ He wondered.

He looked back to the box with his name on it, half hoping it was empty and was precisely that, a prank. He didn't recognize the hand writing if he was honest, although he never really bothered looking at the way people wrote. In the bottom of the box, tucked under one of the flaps of that made the bottom a sealed compartment, laid a single sheet of paper, and an envelope addressed to a PO Box he didn't recognize, along with a small plastic wallet. Within this wallet sat a CD, with no writing indicating the CD's content.

The office was deathly silent, it was six in the evening now, kicking out time for most of the offices in the building. Trucy wasn't going to meet him there for another couple of hours, so why not listen to the mystery CD now?

-x-x-

"I hope this CD made it to the correct person. Since, Phoenix Wright, this is a personal address to you, spoken from my heart, using my own fair words." The CD began, even though the voice did not sound like him, he had an inclination that Apollo was the owner of the voice. After all, only Apollo would need to have a heart to heart with him right now, he'd pretty much left the poor boy on his own, but why use a CD?

"I couldn't delay this any further, and I have thought carefully about what I need to say." There was a long sigh. "You are the closest thing I have to a father, my own was killed when I was still a baby, barely out of my newborn stage, so I never knew anything other than the gruff voice and the rough skin of a not-quite-clean shaven man who would always tell me he was 'daddy'. As I've grown older though, I've forgotten the exact tone, the pitch, the gentle breath on my ears. But that's normal I guess, no person remembers being a tiny little baby." Phoenix had begun to smile, he paused the CD, going to fetch a drink, and held the glass high almost as if proposing a toast to the CD player.  
"Thank you, Apollo." He smiled, lowering his glass.

"You've said yourself plenty of times that I am the same in your eyes as Trucy. So am I your son?" The voice had changed, becoming more pleading.  
"Of course." Phoenix answered, as if talking to the boy in person, rather than a recorded message.  
"I'm assuming you just answered yes." The boy sighed. "You have many amazing qualities about you, and when I was growing up, I idolised you, you know that?"  
"Most of the country did back then." He looked solemn as he said the words.  
"No, I don't mean when you found all that fame and fortune saving the asses of your best friends, the rich and the famous, but back when you were still a nobody working under the very beautiful Mia Fey. I was still a little lad back then." There was a pause. "You were a nobody, just like me, and you were fighting to be a somebody in a world of giants and Harvard law students, and you were awarded for your effort by being employed by one of the most hugely successful lawyers on this side of the country."  
"Not to mention I thought she was hot." Phoenix added shyly.

"You were massively publicised as her pupil, and you didn't disappoint, did you? That only made me want to be like you more. You taught me to have faith." The was a sort of light chuckle. "Then...many years later, there was the evidence forgery scandal, that was what now...? Ten or so years ago?" There was a long, tense silence that passed over the room as the CD remained lifeless for almost half a minute, and Phoenix hung his head in shame. "I have to know, did you really do what they say you did? I don't care if you've done it since, and I know you have! Don't think I've forgotten about what happened when I met you. But...did you really break the hearts of so many people by accepting the blame for something you didn't do? Were you simply to afraid of fame! And...if that was the reason, I sympathise with you a little." The boy let out a frustrated sigh. "Or was that punch to the face I gave you worth it? Did you actually forge it so you wouldn't lose? Because if you did...you are a coward Phoenix Wright." The boy snarled.

A brief break while the boy composed himself.

"Back to me being a part of your family unit anyway, I was proud to look up to you as a father, no matter whether you forged that evidence or not. No matter if you were my blood or not. None of that mattered. For once, I had the security I craved, and even better, my strange new family unit came with a little sister! Something I always wanted!" He sounded a little crazed on that last bit, even if he hadn't meant to. "It didn't matter to me that you weren't a lawyer, and that you'd sneak away at night to earn money through...less than legal purposes...all while under the ruse of playing the piano, I mean, I don't see why you didn't take a few piano lessons and actually played a half decent tune to make your story more believable...but hey, it was your life." Apollo seemed to brighten up again on the recording. "Didn't bother me that my 'little sister' regularly tried to drown me in the bath, claiming it to be part of her magic act, or that she made me run through the streets three times hunting down those god damn. Magic. Panties."

"That was only twelve, sweet short months ago." Apollo's tone had suddenly become more serious, and Phoenix had paused the CD to scurry off and find another bottle of grape juice. "For the first few months life was good, the best few months of my life. Then things began to change, I shouldn't have hassled you to letting Trucy have her freedom, cause I know her dirty little secret. Why don't you ask your precious little magician girl how she met her boyfriend? Or how long ago she lost her virginity? I know the right answers to these questions, cause I was the one that helped her correct the mistakes she made. And I did something to help her I don't approve of, and since she won't tell you, I will. She got pregnant!" Phoenix gripped the neck of the bottle he had been drinking from tighter and tighter, until his knuckles turned white, then in a fit of frenzied rage, launched the bottle at the wall above the CD player, leaving an oozing puddle of grape juice leaking down the wall and onto the carpet.

"You lying little bastard!" Phoenix roared.  
"I'm sure you don't believe me." The boy sounded snide. "So why don't you take a look in the envelope that was in the box?" Apollo asked. "But whatever you do, don't throw the envelope away, you'll need it for something else! So how about hitting pause here, huh?"

He did just that, almost tearing the envelope apart to get at the paper folded inside it. Sure enough, it was as Apollo had said.

"This is...from an abortion clinic?" Phoenix felt his eyes well up, Apollo wasn't lying, his little girl had indeed gotten pregnant. He made note to check that out more closely later. For now, he just wanted to sit and wallow in his depression, at his sudden sick feeling of failing as a father, he had to know more of what this Apollo on the tape had to say.

"Believe me now?" Apollo asked, as angry sounding as Phoenix had been when he raged. "She didn't understand what to do! So I had to lie and hide her little secret from her...from OUR dad! Just so she wouldn't break your heart!" Then the rage stopped again. "I have an idea as to why she did what she did, but that will be for later." Apollo paused again, and it sounded as if the boy was taking a drink.

"Then of course, about two months after I became a part of your...unique family, Miles Edgeworth showed up on our doorstep. My god what a fascinating man, truly an enigma, and all of a sudden...it was as if I was no longer there, merely a toy you had grown bored of since this sleeker, sexier model had come along." He spoke as if he and Edgeworth were toy cars, and he was a mere Mini and Edgeworth was a Ferrari. "All of a sudden, you were always gone when I needed a mentor or advice. I guess I can thank you for giving me the gift of independent learning here, if I hadn't already learned this skill a million and one times over in my past. It started off as you and Edgeworth were going for a meal, reacquainting with old friends, then it became nights out and eventually holidays." Apollo waited again. "You were never here for me or Trucy then, and that first weekend you took away, to London I think it was...Trucy never stopped crying for you once, then she just grew bored of waiting for you to come home and headed off into the sunset with that little snivelling bastard of a boyfriend of hers. I don't want to be a father, I can barely look after myself let alone take responsibility for another person's life...yet here I was being a stand-in dad for you, since you were too busy living the life of luxury while your daughter sat lonely as anything."

"Real fathers...they don't abandon their children Phoenix. They take holidays away from them, sure, I get that. But they still remember to check in once in a while, and they leave some basic guidelines for the kids to follow. You? Well, you leave without even saying goodbye, leaving me and your daughter, two orphans, one of which is still a child to fend for ourselves. Without the guidelines, even soft ones like you have for everything except piercings, tattoos and lovers, Trucy went of the rails, and I'm in the state I'm in."

"State! What state?"  
"There's a piece of paper in your box, and an envelope addressed to a PO Box you've probably no idea about, you might want to go grab a pen and something to lean on, as I'll soon tell you what they're for." Apollo's tone changed to a more angry one again.

"Phoenix Wright, as I was growing, you were my idol. Then you became like my father. But now...I wish I'd never met you or heard of you. I have become lonely and isolated, terrified and destroyed by the secrets I've had to keep from you, and the lies I've had to tell on your behalf, just so you can live the life you live. You've failed as a father, simple as." There was a bitter tone to the boy's voice, and yet there was no anger to be found in Phoenix, almost as if he had submitted and agreed. "You have a 'daughter' who's a liar, who's been pregnant, who doesn't want to spend time around you any more, and you have a 'son' who's clinically depressed."

"D-depressed?"  
"Within the box is another box, which in turn contains another box and so on, getting progressively smaller. You people who are addressees of these boxes are those who have helped influence this state I'm in, in my opinion. That piece of paper...you are to send your feelings about all that I have said and mail them to that address."

Phoenix stopped the CD, hoping, no praying that nothing more was going to be said. He felt stick to his stomach, physically disgusted by what Apollo had said, but more importantly by how his daughter had lied to him and how he had come to suddenly realise his failings as a parent.

The letter was written, stained with tears, but complete and sealed. He turned back to the CD player and hit play.

"Oh...and Phoenix. Don't think you'll be mailing that letter to me. By the time you hear this message...well, I'll be dead, probably at least one or two days dead by now. I chose to end my life, be as cowardly as my peers." Phoenix let out an agonising shriek, denying himself the ability to let those words sink in.

"Goodbye, Phoenix Wright, lawyer, friend, mentor, father. I hope what my dying words have told you etch into your soul and you become a finer being than the one you are now. Do not mourn me, the person taking those letters will handle all the mourning. Just do your bit, take the box to the post office and send it on its way to the next addressee."

Then, the CD stopped turning, and a deathly silence filled the room. Phoenix sat there, bawling his eyes out until it became pure, agonizing fire in his eyes to continue the sobbing.

-x-x-

He had to get to Apollo's apartment, he had to see with his own eyes that the boy had really ended his own life.  
"Ema!" He cried down the phone.  
"Fuck off Phoenix, I'm busy." Ema growled. There was a rustling on her end of the line.  
"Look, stop shacking up with lover boy for two damn seconds and listen!" Phoenix cried out. At the fact he was yelling, and sounded so distraught, Ema pushed Klavier away from her.  
"What is it?" She asked seriously.  
"I-it's Apollo."  
"Oh?"  
"I think he's hurt himself."  
"Is he with you?" Ema asked curiously. "Shouldn't you call an ambulance."  
"Ema. I...I think he's dead." He could hear her breathing rate change, and suddenly she sounded more frail and sickly.  
"I think I heard you wrong, what?"  
"Apollo, I think he's dead. Please, we need to go to his apartment." He begged.  
"I'll be right over." He wouldn't tell her of how he knew, or of the box with the mysterious CD, so for now, he slid the box under the desk and waited. He was anxious and scared to see what would await him.

-x-x-

He was watching his reflection curiously in the bathroom mirror. Confused and dazed, but lulled by the voice of his reflection.  
"You coward." It giggled, in a voice far unlike his own. "But you genius."  
"Thank you." Apollo thanked his reflection before glancing down at the bathroom sink, as he looked back up, his reflection was looking off to the side. "Stop doing that!" He knew it was all in his head, but this voice was so eager to play with him, it made him shudder but for all his fear, he loved the voice. Besides it was his only company.  
"Now then, sir. What to do until you get a reply?" It paused. "Your arms are most...delectable, I trust you are enjoying the release?"  
"Y-yes." He nodded.  
"Perhaps just one more little cut then, say...just here." The reflection seemed to point to an area of his own arm. "There's a good boy now."

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A/N thanks for reading, please leave a comment below thanks for all the support! Will have an update ASAP!


	3. Sommer Dufer

A/N So hey! I'm back from Portugal, working my ass off to churn out some updates :) this was already half done so this was done first! Just so you know, Phoenix is a bit out of character further down, but my justification is that my dad's approach to me is much like his to Trucy, and I tried to picture the explosion my dad would have if I was in her situation.

Anyways happy reading! Thanks for all the reviews! Please remember to hit the little review button now!

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"How did you know he was in danger?" Ema asked as she pushed down even harder on her accelerator, thank god her unmarked cop car was still fitted with a siren.  
"I...I don't want to say" He mumbled nervously, it wasn't that he didn't trust her, far from it, it was just he wasn't sure if Apollo's box was going to be addressed to her in the near future. If it was then hopefully she'd understand full well why Phoenix knew. Ema was deeply suspicious and that little detective instinct whispered in her ear that perhaps Phoenix knew Apollo was dead because he had been the one to kill the boy, Ema dismissed that thought and dispelled the voice, Phoenix Wright was no murderer, he lacked the strength or resolve to be one.

The scene that greeted them was grim, in fact, it descended into the realms of the grotesque and inhuman, walls and surfaces stained with blood, a couch that reeked of copper and scotch and insanely sharp, bloodied knives sticking out from the coffee table and counters. While Phoenix, pale and ghostly, drank in the scene before him, trying to prevent himself from hyperventilating, Ema searched for signs of Apollo, a body, a person, anything.  
"There's nobody here, quick, he must be nearby!" She'd already radioed in for help, now she arranged search parties along with dogs. "...Phoenix, you found a note...didn't you?"

-x-x-

Hours of searching a radius of 5 blocks around his home had recovered no body. _No! Apollo could still be alive, hospitals are still checking wards for patients matching his description! _Ema was denying the thought that her best friend, her perfectly happy, loyal best friend had killed himself. _I don't care if the scene looks like a suicide scene, I don't care how Phoenix knows! I...he isn't dead! _She was well aware she had begun crying.

She felt a sharp pang of guilt, she should have seen him more, to check on him. She should have carried on their tradition of going to the bar every Friday night for girly drinks and snacks (yes, Apollo drank cocktails) just so they could talk, just like the old days, before she had began her insane affair with Klavier.

"The dog's ready." An officer informed her, she handed this young man (who's uniform was new, she noted, and far too big for him) Apollo's familiar red waistcoat. The Shepard took a great sniff of the waistcoat and was immediately tugging sharply on its leash to break free, the dog had got something. Ema chased after the man and his dog, the beast bounding on ahead and dragging its master with it. The beast ground to a halt in front of a large dumpster down a dank side alley by the bar she always drank at with Apollo. _It certainly looks big enough...maybe he's sleeping rough in there, if he is, I'll give him a piece of my fucking mind when he wakes up! Or...there could be a...a body. _The metal lids were heaved off, there was no body on the top, no sleeping Apollo. They helped to hoist the beast into the dumpster to see if it could scout out what it had reacted to.

It furiously dug away at the trash until a clear plastic bag was revealed, inside this bag were Apollo's shoes, jeans and shirt, the spare clothes he had packed into a bag before he left, he had thought ahead, if a dog was sent, it would sniff him out. _So why not mislead it? _He thought.

"We'll keep searching ma'am." A young female officer informed her. She was tired, not from Klavier's ravishing of her (although her just-had-sex hairdo was tightly secured in a hair bobble to not give away what she may have been doing before Phoenix called her) but from this. She was terrified.  
"They haven't found anything." She knelt down before the slumped Phoenix, who in the last hour, had aged a good decade, he had done nothing but slump outside the door and cry in that time. "We'll keep looking." She promised. "I don't believe he's dead. But I need you to be honest, did you find a note?"  
"No." Phoenix lied. "I heard about it." _Which is true, I did.  
_"Who casually says 'Apollo might be dead' to you?"  
"Does it matter?" He whimpered. Ema didn't want to press him too hard, although answers needed to be gotten soon. "Oh...Ema, you might want to run a check on this name, it was mentioned to me...S. Dufer I don't know anything else, but I think that name means something." _It is the name on the box I'm meant to mail...  
_"Of course Nick." A name he hadn't heard in a long time, a reassurance. "Go home. Rest." She ordered.

-x-x-

When he returned home the box greeted him, he filled out the letter of feelings Apollo had requested in his CD, his _last _request he would ever make to Phoenix. He then added a stamp to it, collected up his bike, strapped the box to the back and wheeled it out the door. He'd deliver this by the post office (which was open late) and then wait at home to have a few choice words with his daughter.

When the package was delivered, he swung by the local convenience store to pick up a few cheap bottles of strong wine, he needed to take the edge off, forget the scene he saw today.

-x-x-

Sommer Dufer hated being fifty, life had not been kind to her, caring for children in an orphanage was enough stress to kill the Dalai Lama. Add into that the years of carting children around had done hell for her knees, arms and spine. All she wanted to do in the evening now was go home, switch the TV on, watch the news and her soaps and nod off in her chair. She was old beyond her time, of that she was certain.

When she returned home this particular Friday evening, unaware of any events that would prompt it, a box sat waiting on her porch. It was an effort to strain down and collect said box, and she did not recognise the handwriting, nor understood why it was in a box from a supermarket, still, she heaved the box up, placed it on her swinging bench by her door and unlocked the door. One of her many cats rushed out to greet her.  
"Scoot Jasper." She nudged him with her foot.

Sommer had never really had time for a love life, so, in stereotypical lonely fashion, she had acquired a cat, this kitty obsession soon mutated so she now inhabited her house with nine feline companions. Jasper hissed a little before stepping aside for his master to walk in, box in tow once again.  
"Sommer, you really shouldn't have all these cats." A teenage girl, a girl she had adopted, who's name was Trixie, scolded. Trixie was a typical seventeen year old, rebellious but loved.  
"Maybe you should get rid of Bongo then." Bongo was Trixie's kitten, the ninth, and youngest cat they had in their position.  
"No!" The girl cried out. "Hey...what's in the box?" She reached out and took it from her.  
"No idea." The woman shrugged.

Trixie followed Sommer into the living room, watched as she carefully tore into the box with her letter opener and peered inside. Inside was another box, addressed to someone else, which both the woman and the teenage girl found unusual, along with a CD, a pendant and an envelope with a folded piece of paper inside, addressed to a PO Box.  
"E. Skye?" The teenage girl recited the name on the new, smaller box. "Any idea who that is?"  
"None." The woman replied as she turned the envelope over and removed the sheet of paper. "...It's blank?"  
"Maybe this CD will tell you." Trixie removed it from the plastic sleeve and placed it into the CD Player before glancing at her watch. "Oh shit, got to run! Max is meeting me in five. Just press this button with the little triangle on."  
"I may be useless with technology." Sommer said. "But not that useless."

Sommer had decided to change into something more comfortable, pour herself a mug of coffee and take a slice of her foster-daughter's home made chocolate cake before she went to the CD player and hit the play button.

"...Children, children! Simmer down and take a seat, for it's story time!" Unique. He'd known that when he recorded it that it was something she'd recognise. Sommer's eyes widened, when she was in her mid twenties, right through till she'd begun to lose her chirpy attitude towards those at the orphanage...right after she began to foster children into her own home. "Sommer Dufer, how are you? I've missed you, it's me...Apollo. Apollo Justice." A faint smile came to her face, the most successful of her children in her care, a beautiful young boy he had been until he'd been adopted.  
"You were my 'mother'." He began. "You were the earliest person I could truly recall being parental towards me. I couldn't remember my parents. You were always the nicest lady at the orphanage by far." He giggled to himself. "I remember you telling me about how you found me, that innocent little baby, barely out of newborn stage, and you'd found me huddled up in a blanket, in an open picnic basket by the doorstep of the orphanage." _That was right, you were so tiny, so sweet looking... _She recalled.

She had been the first one to work that day, she'd only recently begun working at that particular orphanage, she was desperate not to look tardy. It was the start of winter, all the leaves had fallen from the trees and already there had been a faint scattering of snow. All employees would enter, check in with the woman who remained there overnight, sleeping in her room above the office, then wake the children and set out for a day's work. She'd almost missed the basket, it had been held in place by a small mound of snow, just to the right of the steps. In fact, she might not have even looked to the right, had she not heard the faint murmur of life in the basket. She'd struggled to balance herself to reach down for the basket, expecting it to be empty, abandoned. Inside however, she found a tiny wriggling mound wrapped in a knitted blanket with a small note taped to the flap of the basket, on the inside. All it said was _Apollo, I'm sorry. Please look after him, he's still a baby, born July 2004..._

"I was another baby of the last baby boom, before the one we're in of course, I'm sure the orphanage is swimming in small children once again, the children that have been forgotten, just like me." Apollo whimpered. "Well, I think that's true for me, I mean, I never really knew my parents." He was right, he was born in the middle of a baby boom, now they were trapped in another. "I could have been the child of a crack-whore, prostitute or the illegitimate child of a married man and his maid, although deep down inside of me, I know those people aren't the people who conceived me."  
"I was...four wasn't I?" Sommer quickly worked out in her head that the year would have been 2008, Apollo had been born 2004 according to the year written on his note. She paled, she knew where this was going. "You'd become...different. I wouldn't understand till I was older why exactly you were different, suddenly more doting on those of us who had become your favourites. Now...I understand you and your partner were desperate for a child, you'd tried so hard, for years, then you were told you were infertile." Sommer had fallen deathly silent, it was common knowledge that she was infertile, along with the rest of her history, that didn't mean it didn't hurt though. "You'd tried to get him to agree to adopting, adopting any child from the orphanage, after all, there were plenty enough of us to pick from. He'd refused, he'd bolted on you too...didn't he?"  
"You little bastard, you know he did." She growled, but it wasn't a hateful growl, it was closer to a teasing.

"Conveniently, just around that time, you'd moved into a massive five bedroomed house, you were alone, and the orphanage was teaming with the extra children from the peak of the baby boom. So you decided to fill the hole left in your heart by your inability to have children and the loss of your fiancé by becoming a foster carer...am I right?"  
"Yes." She replied to the CD solemnly. _I did exactly that...I was only trying to improve your lives, give you stability...and replace...or rather channel my lost love.  
_"You took in six of us, as many as you thought you could handle. You took in me and Jack, my friend, we stayed in one room, then you took in four girls." Apollo recalled this rather fondly. "You treated us well, you had a wide open field for us to play in, all the toys we could want, and a family, albeit a temporary one." She was still lurking around in that house for years, it was only recently she had moved into her much smaller house, now she didn't foster anymore children and had since adopted the last child she had fostered, Trixie. "A couple of the girls were already in the process of being adopted, when they were gone, you took in not just two, but four more girls." Apollo whimpered. "And this is where things began to go wrong."

"Apollo...please don't...those were dark times." She whimpered.  
"I don't think you ever did it on purpose, don't ever doubt me on that." Apollo assured. "But soon, we were all being fed sparingly, if at all. We were trying to scrounge frozen food from the empty freezers. You were struggling, we all know that. We all knew it back then too." Sommer had begun to cry."We were famished, we were desperately hungry, so thin that many of us would go through school begging friends for more meals, any morsel of food they'd spare." He remembered how humiliating that was, begging friends for additional meals. "You were too proud to ask for help, weren't you?" Apollo growled.  
"Yes Apollo, I was."  
"So...why did you not take some of us back to the orphanage? I mean...me and Jack, although we didn't know it back then, had attracted some interest from some prospective parents. We would have protested and screamed and cried, like the little eleven year old assholes we were back then, but, providing our adoptions went through, and succeeded we'd have forgiven."

"It wasn't that easy, you know that!" She cried out.  
"I know it wasn't that easy, I remember hearing that phone call that night, you were in trouble with the boss, the services were saying you were having trouble with us, you had twelve of us by the time I left. Yet you couldn't send us back as we'd be over capacity and become nothing more than street urchins." _How did you hear that? _"I know now you'll be wondering how I heard that phone, I was feeling poorly, I'd gone to get a bottle of water. I'd sneaked a peek into the hallway when I heard you talking in a hushed voice." _You always were a clever one... _She smiled to herself.  
"I'd also stolen some of the cake you'd made, I know you never found out who actually did that, figured I'd confess. Not that it matters much now. But I'm twice that age now, figured I'd make sure I admitted my sins, no matter how trivial they appear."  
"Bizarre confession taken sweetie." She smirked.

"Why did you hit the bottle?" She knew this was coming. "Those thirty or so dollars a week you spent on scotch, could have bought needles and thread to repair our clothes, cheap food to fill our bellies and maybe the occasional bottle of soda as a treat." Apollo said this with an air of defiance.

"I don't hate you though." He was sincere, he did genuinely love her.  
"I'm so sorry." She cried.  
"You were an...unusual drunk, you were quiet, retreated into your shell became so quiet and distant. You'd often sit and talk to yourself, pretending that the other voice you were mimicking was that of you fiancé, or dote on the younger of the children in your care, pretending they were the baby you were never able to have."

"Don't think I haven't been talking to Trixie." The boy whispered into the CD. "I've heard that you finally stopped the drink, adopted her, being the last one you ever fostered. Look after her."  
"I will Apollo, I will." She had made mistakes with those children, she knew she had, she made a mistake thinking she could take on and care for those children. She had hoped they had all grown to be amazing people. In reality, she had nursed a lawyer, three manual labourers, five con artists, five drug addicts and five escorts. Not really a good track record, except for the fist four.

"You have to promise this, since...well...don't blame yourself...but my depression took over. Life recently has been far too much of a shock. You raised me to be grateful of the simplest things, and to look at the people who look like low-lives and question why they were that way." Apollo sighed. "You were desperate for a child, you worked with us everyday. You were upset that we were there, and we weren't your children, you hated the people that abandoned us, but you still hated us for merely existing."  
"Your...depression?" She shook that off. "I have to admit though, you were very sharp, always were, always will be, you are right there." Her coffee had long since gone cold, but she still reached out and wolfed down the cold fluid in a single gulp. "I have to be honest...you were right." For some odd reason, it made her feel a great relief, admitting that, admitting it to a recording of the only person she knew who was smart enough, and cared enough to look into it.

"...Sommer Dufer...I am dead." He said bluntly. "I ended my own life, cut my wrists and bled to death, not long after these messages were recorded." She wanted to vomit. "You were a minor little influence on my choice, but don't worry, you were one of quite a few, the box, it has already visited one person, they have removed the box you now have, and mailed it forward. These people are the people that have influenced my choices." He left a lengthy pause to allow the message to sink in. "I loved you, I still love you, even in death. You were psychotic, trying to picture a perfect life with children who aren't yours, using alcohol to solidify your illusion. You've recovered now, you've become a good mother to Trixie, please make sure you stay that way."  
"No Apollo! No! Say it isn't so!" The woman cried, her emotional pain marring all her features.

"You were a good woman, but you were a drunk, you should never have let her take me away...you know that? What she did to me was unforgivable." _She? _Now was not the time for thinking. "You should heed to my last request, I want you to write your feelings for me on that piece of paper, mail them to the PO Box, the person who receives it will be the person in charge of arranging my funeral." There was a very pained sigh. "Thank you, Sommer Dufer."

She had cried, for a very long time, she'd filled the letter like she was asked (being religious made her very conscious to heed the last wishes of a deceased person), stamped it and placed it with the box with a label saying 'post me Trixie'.

She ripped the CD out from its slot in the CD player and smashed it to pieces, smacking it against her trash can with enough force to crack a person's skull, vowing Trixie would never hear what she just heard. He had died, her one achievement, the boy she wanted to adopt as her own (although Trixie would never know that), had taken his own life.

_All thanks to an alcoholic psycho like me. He never deserved his neglect...forgive me Apollo..._

For the first time since going cold turkey, she scrambled to her safe, hastily punching in a combination and removing the wine and scotch. She cracked the top off the wine bottle, and amidst the painful wails of sorrow, took glugs of the deep red drink. Within 15 minutes it was gone.

When Trixie returned home later in the evening, Sommer Dufer would be lying almost comatose on her couch, reeking of the alcohol, she couldn't awake her no matter how hard she tried, and in the morning, when she woke to deliver the package and letter to the post office, there was still no sign of movement. She made note to ring an ambulance, get her checked over.

She'd poisoned herself with a sheer volume of alcohol and had her stomach cleared of the remaining toxin. She'd tried to kill herself, to feel Apollo's pain.

-x-x-

Trucy never did return home the night Phoenix got Apollo's CD. When she did return home, her father was livid.  
"You little slut." He growled, he hated derogatory comments towards women, but she had lied to him, his own daughter lied to him and she made a man who was now dead lie to him!  
"Daddy what the hell is wrong with you!" The girl had paled and was stunned by her father's choice of words for her.  
"Sit. Down."  
"No!" He stood up and grabbed his daughter hard by the shoulders, forcing her to the couch and pushing her face first into the cushions. "Daddy you're hurting me!"  
"Why didn't you tell me you had an abortion?" He let go and stood back. "Why didn't you tell me you weren't safe!" He roared.  
"H-how did you...?" The girl's voice was barely a whisper. "That bastard! He told you!" She roared.  
"Apollo? Yes." He said bluntly.  
"I'm gonna kill him!"  
"He beat you to it."  
"W-what?" The girl did a double take.

"He committed suicide, he beat you to it!" The man snarled at her. This was not his little girl, he refused to believe it.  
"H-he?"  
"You need to leave." Phoenix didn't want her to see him cry, see him wallowing in his pain as a father. "Get out. Now. Do not come back till I'm ready."  
"But daddy..."  
"No, get out." And he threw her out the door and never hesitated.

That night, he sat staring at the stars, believing that he'd done Apollo a service, he hadn't tried to kill the girl, his daughter, who'd make the boy lie about something so major. After all, killing his only blood relative out of pure hateful rage was not something a man should do, no, he'd calm down first.

She can stay with that pathetic scum boyfriend until then.

And on the other side of the door, she'd began to sob uncontrollably, she didn't believe Apollo had died, now she'd been to the scene, seen Ema looking like a ghost, one thought passed through her mind.

_...I've killed him._

-x-x-

Apollo now had an alias name (should he need it), a new look, he had returned to the post office to check to see if his first letter had arrived. It had. Still, right now, he didn't want to read it. He simply slipped it into his satchel and left.

If only he realised his fake suicide had led to his sister being made homeless and the woman who worked with him try to take her own life.

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A/N - Hope you enjoyed!


	4. Ema Skye

A/N - First of all, wow, thanks for the amazing reviews which show me clearly that people have been moved by my story, it's so reassuring to see I'm creating emotion in people. It's also nice to see the attention this rather taboo story has been getting, so thank you kindly. Thanks in advance for continuing support also. So here we go, another chapter.

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Ema Skye fell into her couch in her lonely little apartment. She'd been at that scene almost all of the weekend, she'd been all across the city handing out 'lost person' flyers with pictures of Apollo on, she still refused to believe he had actually committed suicide. He wouldn't. He couldn't. Her whole body ached, but she found the energy to reach forward and tap the playback button on her answer machine, she hadn't been home for a week now, she'd have at least five messages.

"Hey sis! Figured you wouldn't be in, just wanted to check how you were. How's life been treating you? Just so you know, we've finally moved into the new place by the lake, you should come visit us sometime! Even if it's just for a weekend. I guess you're off doing the horizontal monster mash with lover boy, so play safe sweetie, love you! Lana." Ema cringed. Her answer machine beeped to signal a second message.

"Hey Ema! It's Lexi here, wondering how you'd been! Haven't seen you in a month or so now, wondered if you'd like to come out on a girl's party night! Well...a Hen night! Matty proposed to me!" Ema growled under her breath, right now, she really wasn't in the mood for her best friend's happiness.

"Hey baby! Wondered if you'd like to-" Ema quickly hit the skip button, Klavier was not what she wanted to hear. "Where are you? Have you-" she continued to skip through four other blatant Klavier messages.

"Hey Ema...um...it's been a while." Suddenly the answer machine of her phone became the central focus of her attention, it was a message from Apollo. "I know you're busy, but how about meeting up for a meal and a drink? Chat about old times, seems like forever since we spent time together like before. I miss you...okay? Call me, won't you?" She quickly scrambled to check the date of the message, it was a week old, before Apollo had died. She ripped the power supply out when the remaining messages were more of a verbal deluge from Klavier.

She began to sob uncontrollably, huddling a pillow into her chest, before finally, on this very late Sunday night, she fell into a deep sleep.

-x-x-

"Hey Tru, I'm sorry about what happened with your dad you know." Her boyfriend began. Since Trucy showed up at his door late Friday night, he had barely managed to get her to speak a word. "And...about your friend. He...he was a good person."  
"A good person?" Trucy snarled. "He was the best! Name one other person who'd have covered up such a major fuck up on our part! Now he's..." Her boyfriend held her close, as again, for the umpteenth time, she was crying.

-x-x-

The slamming on the door was persistent.

Sleep addled eyes gradually adjusted to the now brightly lit room, Ema groaned awake, it was morning. When had she fallen asleep, exactly?  
"Give me a minute!" She groaned. _Who the hell is that? If it's Klavier I'll kill him._

She noticed she was still dressed, so she tried to smooth out some of the wrinkles in her shirt and pull her hair back into a ponytail so she looked half decent. To her shock, the person at the door was a postman.  
"Morning Ema." The young man nodded to her. "Sorry to wake you."  
"You're just doing your job." She mumbled sleepily.  
"Hey...um...is it true, about the lawyer?" _Ah he must be on about the TV broadcast put out to locate Apollo's body...damn bosses wouldn't listen when I said he wasn't dead. _  
"It looks to be." Ema whimpered.  
"I'm very sorry, I know he was a good friend to you." He reached out and touched her arm reassuringly. "Hey...if I can help, you let me know."  
"Thanks."  
"Oh a package by the way." He knelt down and lifted the plain cardboard box and held it out to her. "It's very light for something so big." He commented.  
"Wonder what it is..." She checked the box for some writing, the writing was very plain, indistinguishable, almost machine written. "Thanks Michael."

She set the box on the coffee table and poured herself a large mug of black coffee, hoping it would give her the boost she needed to last the day. She stabbed the top of the package open, violently shredding some of the cardboard in her haste. She reached inside and pulled out a CD.

_No writing, no nothing...hm..._

Ignoring anything else in the box, she paced across the room to her CD player, blowing off the dust that had gathered on the long since obsolete device. She removed an old CD full of outdated dance tracks and threw it onto the shelf beside her, sliding this new disc into its place.

It took a long time for any sound to come out when she hit play, and when it did, her whole body froze and waited.

"Hey Ema." It began. "By now I'm guessing you already know about me, that I'm dead, took my own life."  
"Apollo?" She asked the CD dumbly. "No! You're not dead! No!" She cried out.  
"Don't deny yourself it." The disc said bluntly. "Now, how about you go grab a coffee and take a seat, then listen to what I have to say."

Compelled by the CD, she did exactly that, pumping the volume up and laying on her couch, pillow against her chest once more.

"Don't be sad or angry about what I've done or am about to say. Promise me." He sighed. "You were the best friend a guy like me could want, you know that?"  
"Why? I was like anyone else."  
"I can imagine you right now, sat in your apartment going 'I'm just a regular girl, what makes me so special?' and don't kid me, I know you are. You have an amazing sense of modesty and humility about yourself, you know?" He chuckled to himself. "You sit there going 'I'm normal' no you're not, you're anything but! How many other girls in the world have a lawyer with mild psychic abilities as a friend and gets in the sack with Klavier Gavin whenever she wants? How many? One. Just one. You."  
"Thanks." She blushed.  
"And just so you know, you always were my friend, even when it seemed like you never had time for me any more..." Apollo sounded disheartened by that comment.

"Now...where to begin...well you were an interesting one, that's for sure. A beautiful yet saddened woman who was very close minded, very judgemental, despite the fact she was a scientist. Scientists _are _meant to keep an open mind Ema, that's how they make so many mind-blowing discoveries. I mean, look around us, the world we live in changes so quickly these days." Apollo chuckled. "At first you were just a pain, some woman who always impeded my investigations, but after my revealing I'm friends with Phoenix Wright, you brightened up a little, or accepted me at least." She felt guilty for smiling here, after all, he was dead, she should be miserable. "After the major Kitaki case, you and I were working together on some minor cases, nothing too big. Just a few theft cases, that weird case centred around that little girl, who didn't know who her dad was."

Ema recalled that case, an eleven year old girl who'd reportedly chained herself to the gates of a large manufacturing plant after her mother revealed her step-father was not her biological father (despite her calling him dad all her eleven years) and that her real father was some drug pushing junkie. So she'd chained herself to the gates of her step-father's company, until he prized her free and then decided he would take her to see her real father, without her mother's permission. The house of her real father was set alight, the girl believed to have committed arson, the only people who weren't convinced were Ema and Apollo. Even Trucy believed that this little girl had burnt her father's home down. When they asked a second fire investigation officer to check the house, it was discovered their hunch was right, and the first investigation officer was a fraud, who'd burnt the house down himself in order to look a hero when he saved the occupants. Unfortunately, the occupants freed themselves. Last Ema had heard, the little girl's real father had left rehab and was having some contact with his daughter.

"You'd wait for me after I left court." Apollo's voice sliced through her daydream. "That first time you did it I was so confused, I thought I'd leant you something and forgotten to take it back, I just remember standing there like a bit of a moron to be quite frank. You just said 'wondered if you were hungry' and right on cue, my stomach sold me out." He laughed to himself. "This was the beginning of our tradition of meeting up for drinks every Friday night, and a meal if the day had been a long one or we'd been in court."  
"That's right." She closed her eyes, remembering that first time she asked him to join her and that confused look on the rather dopey boy's face.  
"I found out more about you during these times, you were an orphan just like me, you had a big sister who took care of you when you were little, you told me of that horrid case you were involved in as a teen, you discussed when you met Phoenix and everything. You even told me stupid little things like your cat's name was Mittens and your favourite colour was purple."  
"Such stupid trivial things make good small talk." She smiled.  
"Then I remember you telling me about how you pictured yourself, loving relationship, proper job as a Forensic Scientist, how you were going to re-study for your dream job."

A distant memory for her in recent times.

"So why is it that when Klavier came along that all stopped?" Apollo asked desperately.  
"I..." Ema had to fight back tears. In all honesty it had only just dawned on her.  
"...You went from craving that loving relationship to being Klavier Gavin's personal sex toy."  
"No I'm not!" Ema raged, although she hadn't managed to convince herself her rage was real with the tone of her voice.  
"Maybe that was harsh of me. I knew I'd get a response from you that way though." Apollo sounded smug. "But Ema...seriously, you threw away love and companionship to hit the sack with that rock star asshole friend of ours."  
"I agree with you there, he _is _an asshole."  
"I get that sometimes we're so blind-sighted by passion, I understand that you thought he gave you the best sex you'd ever gotten, but he didn't want, nor does he want now, a relationship with you." Apollo sounded like that caring brother Ema had always wanted when she was growing up, that one who'd be right up at your side ready to defend your point.  
"I know. That doesn't matter though."  
"I know it doesn't matter now." Apollo pretty much mimicked. "That's only 'cause you've rationalised that notion out of your mind and accepted it as the norm."

"I...you're right." She didn't want to fight this point, she wouldn't deny it, he was right. "But this is my life."  
"I'm only telling you this because I love you, but you're like a hooker to him. He _pays _you in gifts of clothes, fine jewellery, he even offered to buy you a house once as well, didn't he?"  
"I'm no whore!" Ema spat, this time real emotion in her voice. "And yes, he did. So what?"  
"Everyone in the precinct soon lost all respect for you, most of the women for who you were pictured with so often and reported to sleep with in all those stupid glossy magazines. Most of the men...or the fellow 'Klavier is a fop' women lost all respect for you because you were sleeping with him and taking those...gifts away." Apollo sighed. "As you can imagine, news like this travels fast in the community of the precinct. Everyone there is like a shark, living in the same reef, there's not enough prey, so they like to attack the other sharks to drive them away. So their taunting and insults at you were there to make you less of a competition, and to spice up their otherwise dull and mundane lives as pencil pushers of society."  
"So they spread the rumors about me!"  
"Then one of those rumors came true, or did you forget about that?" Apollo asked, almost spitefully.

"Oh no..." Ema cringed.  
"You called me after a visit to your doctor that day, do you remember?" Apollo asked. "You were in floods of tears, and asked me to meet you at a café near your doctors surgery. The place was going to be quiet, you promised. So I agreed to meet up with you."

-x-x-

"Ema, what's the matter?" Apollo asked soothingly as he placed her drink in front of her, sweetener on the side and her cinnamon biscuits she always loved on a plate in front of her. Just how she liked it. "Did something happen at the doctors?"  
"Apollo...I was just told I have Chlamydia!" She sobbed, luckily she hadn't yelled it loud enough to let the other few patrons of the café hear her outburst. He let her cry for a while, soothingly running a finger tip along the length of her outstretched arm, calming her a little. "S-sorry." She dabbed her eyes a little.  
"As in the STI Chlamydia?"  
"Yes doofus!" She snapped.  
"Well...where from?"  
"Well from having sex of course!" She growled.  
"Klavier gave it to you?" Apollo asked shocked.  
"Well I haven't been with anyone else! So he must have!" Ema looked hurt Apollo questioned who had given her the disease.

"Look...I didn't mean to suggest you were sleeping around there." Apollo explained. "Sorry if it sounded like I was."  
"It's fine." She calmed.  
"Are they treating you?"  
"Yeah...oh Apollo, this is so embarrassing!" She moaned. "How am I meant to tell Klavier?"  
"I guess you don't...for now." Apollo suggested. "Just get yourself cleared up first."

"Apollo, there is one other thing...and I can tell from your eyes that you've wondered it too, we always use condoms." Ema explained.  
"Well maybe one just broke." Apollo explained. "You aren't pregnant or something are you?" This earned a very hard kick to the knee, so much he jumped up and kicked the table on the way.  
"Ok, ok, that's good." He rubbed his knee, at least she only kicked there and not a little further north.

"You'll keep this a secret, won't you Apollo? Promise."  
"Of course Ema, there's no need to ask."

-x-x-

That was the last time she had spent any time with him, confided in him like she had done before Klavier, that was a few months ago now.

"You explained later that you didn't recall a time that the condom had split, but you did make a comment about being drunk before and not remembering whether you and he had bothered using them, and I have to admit, that knowledge deeply disappointed me. That you'd have drunken sex without protection." Apollo scolded.  
"I deserve that, I know..." She was just thankful she hadn't been knocked up. "But I go to the doctors regular since."  
"And you still haven't told him." There was a heavy sigh. "Clearly it hasn't escaped your amazingly brilliant scientific mind that you were both checked before you began your...escapades, so at some stage, he's cheated on you Ema."  
"Or he's with another girl and I'm his bit on the side." This thought had been weighing heavily on her mind for a while now, and with Apollo's comment, it gained more weight and could possibly be true. She shook her head.

"You never spent time with me after you got with Klavier, I remember leaving the courtroom with a spring in my step, ready for my evening drink with you, then feeling deflated when I'd see you donning bike gear with Klavier and getting on to that mechanical death trap of his." His bike. Of course. "The first few times I didn't really care, then as time went on, I felt more and more rejected, less important than your fuck buddy."  
"I'm so sorry!" Ema cried out.  
"I felt like I did when I was a child, that weirdo who never gets picked for anything." Apollo whimpered.

"Do not take this as me being jealous of Klavier, I mean, he won your heart fair and square. I was never in the race, you're much too pretty and smart to have ever have wanted to be with me." Apollo laughed to himself. "Not that I ever wanted a relationship with you anyway – no offence, you were and still are a fine friend for me."  
"Thanks Apollo, that means a lot."  
"Ema...will you do something for me?" The CD asked.  
"What?" It was almost as if she was talking to him again."Will you do your studies to be a Forensic Scientist again, please. Let my death open your eyes and see Klavier is nothing but a taint on your soul."

Without hesitation, she responded. "I promise."

There was a lengthy pause.

"No matter how abandoned I felt, I still remembered the good times we had. And I have to be honest, when I got the call to meet you after that doctor's appointment that day, I was a little excited, even though I knew it was going to be bad news." Apollo went quiet. "Does that make me a bad person Ema?"  
"No. It makes me the bad person, I was the selfish one, I didn't want you around until you were the only one left I could turn to." She was in tears again.  
"I think suicide has made me a bad person Ema. But at least now I've gone knowing that you'll get the answers, or at least _a _reason why I chose to do what I did." Apollo sounded choked up, almost as if he was crying on the tape.

"Here is my final request of you Ema, in the box is another box, forward that to the person on the address label. There's also a piece of paper and an envelope. This envelope will be sent to a friend of mine who'll be handling all my funeral stuff. It should contain all the thoughts of feelings of what I've just said, do you understand?" She nodded shyly. "By now you should already know, this box has been to visit Phoenix, perhaps you and he should talk."

Then, the voice faded into the air around it, and all that met Ema's ears was silence. She rushed to the CD player, removed the tape and scurried off to the bedroom, hiding it in her underwear drawer. She grabbed a bear from her dresser, a gift from Apollo and held it close to her as she wept. This was as close as she was ever going to feel to Apollo now.

-x-x-

Late in the afternoon when Ema finally pulled herself to an almost-suitable state, she walked across the hall to her postman's apartment (He luckily lived in the same building) and told him to get express delivery on the box and letter. He obliged and set off to take them to the post office there and then.

Her apartment felt eerie when she returned, she was flooded with emotions. Fear, anger at both herself and Apollo, and a deep regret. She had changed, she had turned away from a boy who was well and truly devoted to her, and she had done so without a moment's hesitation. What kind of woman does that? _One who's caught in a web of lies spun by Klavier Gavin..._

As if he knew she was on about him, she heard a knock at the door, and the smell of German perfume wafted through her door without the need to open it. She was overcome by two very different decisions, would she let Klavier in just so she didn't have to be alone in her despair, or get rid of the man who had changed her. Tell him to leave her alone for a while.

"Frau!" Klavier looked relieved when she opened the door. "You haven't returned any calls, are...are you ok?" Of course, Apollo's death wouldn't have reached the ears of this almighty selfish prick yet, news that didn't revolve around Klavier tended to take a while to reach him, through choice.  
"Yes Klavier, I'm fine." She lied. "Look, I need to be alone for a while."  
"Why? Have I done something wrong?" He asked, shocked and hurt.  
"No Klavier." She had to force that lie out. "Look I just need some space ok."  
"But-"  
"Just fuck off Klavi!" She slammed the door straight in his face after yelling so loud a few curious heads popped out from doors down the hall.  
"What did I do?" He called through the door. Knocking again.  
"JUST FUCK OFF!" She screamed as loud as she could. "I'll call you when I'm ready." And after hearing a fist slam into the door and a long sigh as he realised she was not going to open the door again, he begrudgingly took off, a whole two hours after arrival.

"We need to talk." Ema began as soon as the phone was picked up. "I got the box."  
"So...you know how I knew Apollo had died now?" Phoenix sighed heavily. "Please, I need someone to discuss what he said to me with, and I'd like to hear what he said to you, meet me in my office in an hour."  
"Of course." _I need to talk to someone..._

-x-x-

The box was now on it's way once more, off to the household from which Apollo's name was given.

To the house of miss Rana Justice.

* * *

A/N - Hope you've enjoyed reading and experiencing Apollo's raw emotion, as always, please hit the review button and let me know.


	5. Rana Justice

Sorry for the delays, so I've decided I'll spend the day working on story updates. Just to catch up on my works.

* * *

Heading out of the city, the home of Ema Skye and all of her friends would land you in the quiet sub-urbs. These sub-urbs were close to Apollo's heart, this is where he grew up, after leaving the foster care of Summer, where he grew with Rana Justice and her family, her twin children. Rana Justice was a pampered woman, a talented insurance broker, and her children had always been spoilt.

Now, the busy business woman was about to get a nasty surprise, a box, containing the suicide note of her adopted son.

-x-x-

Rana hated to admit she was aging, she was in her fifties now, she seemed to spend longer staring in her mirror rather than at her computer screen. The joys of working at home was that people didn't have an issue with you doing it, since you were the only one there. For fifty five, she was a good looking woman, or at least, that's what her friends told her, her children too, not that she believed them. When her phone rang, she decided to abandon her efforts to work and sit on the porch.

"Hi mom!" Her daughter, eighteen and stunning, a beautiful vintage blonde. Rana was envious of her, her daughter's shapely body and beautiful face reminded her of before she had children, when she too had that stunning body.  
"Hi Anna, what's the matter?" Her daughter very rarely rang from school.  
"Mom, will you come take me to the appointment?"  
"Yes of course."

In the city, vanity was a big deal. Beauty was a big business, and it saddened Rana that only her two biological children had taken to this rather expensive past time. She had promised her daughter a boob job, so breast implants she will get.

When she left, she didn't notice that strange cardboard box sat on the front decking.

-x-x-

Ema had walked to Phoenix's office, she didn't feel like she was good enough to get in the car and drive, and her head was spinning with sickness and nausea, she didn't want to cause an accident. She didn't want to cause another person the pain and suffering she felt.

"Come in." Phoenix was nursing his head.  
"What's the matter?" Ema too was exhausted, but something told her Phoenix had been dealing with his pain in a different way to just crying like Ema had.  
"I...uh...drank too much." Ema glanced over Phoenix's shoulder, there were several bottles of wine that had been emptied and strewn across the desk, the floor around the desk had dark purple splatters where dregs of wine had freed themselves from the bottles.  
"Nick you moron!" Ema yelled, aggravating his hangover further. "Drinking won't help us!"  
"W-what did he say to you?" Phoenix asked.

"The truth." Ema replied.  
"Specifically."  
"Klavier's no good for me, he took me away from Apollo and he's sleeping with someone else." Ema said it with no emotion in her voice. "You?"  
"I let him down, I'm a lousy father, my daughter is a whore." Ema could see the physical sadness in his expression. "Trucy was...she was pregnant, she had an abortion, she made Apollo..." He began to sob, Ema's immediate reaction was to wrap her arms around him, she could hear his whining shoot through her ears.

"She...made him lie, didn't she?" Ema finished what Phoenix was trying to say. "Gods...I miss him already." She clung tighter to Phoenix as she felt tears overwhelm her eyes again.

-x-x-

Rana was tired, her doctor was right, she needed more treatment herself, but for now, she simply wanted to return to work. The box was no longer sat on her porch, she instead found it on her desk, with a hastily scrawled note from her son saying he found it on the doorstep, that his dad had called and that he'd taken some food and drink from the fridge and was heading out to soccer.

She looked at the box, assessed it and stared at it for a long time.

"I wasn't expecting a package." The woman said to herself, she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear noting it needed dying again before hunting down a pair of scissors in the desk drawer.

She tipped the box up and the box inside landed on the desk with a thud, she heard something clatter as it bounced with the impact. Something else slammed onto the floor, she continued to stare at the second box and ignore the shiny object laying there. She twisted the new box to face her and realised it was not addressed to her, instead addressed to a "K. Gavin" nobody she instantly recognised, besides, K Gavin could be anyone.

She lowered the box onto her computer chair, in doing so she noticed the glint of the CD. She knelt down and noticed an envelope as well. The envelope proved no clue into finding out who sent the box.

Relief washed over her that the box wasn't dangerous and decided to try and listen to the CD. Nervously she inserted the disc into the CD player in the living room, grabbing the remote and turning the volume down, since the CD would boom out whatever was on there, thanks to her son's tendency to listen to music very loud until someone else got into the house.

"Ah, there we go." The voice seemed to say to itself. "Rana Justice, queen of the insurance world, I hope you're well." Apollo began, it seemed such a casual way of introducing himself. "I'm hoping you still recognise the sound of my voice."  
It took her a while, but she mumbled out "Apollo?"  
"That's right, it's me, Apollo Justice, your adopted son." He seemed to want to laugh, but that it wasn't a good idea, so decided to stop the chuckling and concentrate.  
"What's this all about?" Rana asked, confused.

"I remember when I first heard the rumours of someone taking an interest in me." Apollo seemed to be solemn. "I thought it was a joke at first, some kind of prank by the kids who still lived in the orphanage, since the older ones had got wind of the trouble Summer was having with us."  
"I heard those rumours. About Summer." The woman recalled that, Summer was fond of the boy, she wanted something better for him than she had managed to offer.  
"For weeks I laughed it off 'nobody would be interested in me, I'm eleven!' I'd declare." Apollo laughed. "Almost anyone who adopted a child wanted a baby or a small kid, it was very rare a person wanted one of us pre-teens. And yet, the rumour was true, you wanted me."

"You wanted an older child, to act as a role model for your twins, since they were wild and unruly. You wanted a girl, but they couldn't offer one who showed the self control you sought." Apollo remembered the stuff Summer told him. "Other than that, I knew nothing of you until your husband came to pick me up on June 12th, exactly 4 months after I heard the rumour."  
"I remember that day." The woman sympathised.  
"I was so excited when all the papers were finalised, I remember Summer was helping me to rush around and helping me by sorting out the things I was just slinging into my case." Apollo seemed to be enjoying the memory as there was a long pause. "I remember the other kids in the house, my friends, my family of sorts, all crowding out onto the porch, eagerly waiting to see the people who had adopted me. Out from that car emerged Simon, your husband, as he was then."

"Don't mention him." The woman growled, why she was listening to the tape alluded her, after all...it was Apollo...  
"I was whisked away into the back of that damn SUV, although he had to give me a boost into the back, I was still very short then, and yet to have my first growth spurt." Apollo chuckled to himself. "I hadn't really thought about the clothes he was wearing, or the cost of the car, I hadn't really thought until I saw the house you lived in. I was adopted by a very well to do family."  
"And this is a bad thing?" The woman bristled.

"Simon assured me that he'd take my case to my new room, and I remember only ever seeming to find one of the outfits I had in my case ever again." Apollo sighed. "I know they were ragged hand me downs, but they were _mine, _something I could call my own."  
"I threw those old rags out, after all, look at the wonderful clothes I bought you in return!" She snarled at the CD player.  
"I found myself drowning in new things, I had a bedroom kitted out in expensive things, and parents who seemed to lack self-control with money." Apollo snapped. "I wanted love. Not money."  
"Any other child would be snapping my hand off for this!"  
"I'm not ungrateful, after all, you...or rather Simon paid for my education. With Kristoph's help of course, when I went to law school."

"Enough about that, I want to talk about the reason you actually adopted me." Apollo was blunt, and quick to change the subject.  
"What do you mean 'reason'?" The woman was offended.  
"You have a very beautiful daughter, and a very talented son, even when they were seven, you could tell they were going to go far." Apollo was always jealous of those two. "When you told Summer they were wild and unruly, and she told me that, I expected them to be hanging off the crystal chandelier or firing your Chihuahua dog out of a catapult, but they were just...normal...playful children."  
"No they weren't!"

"What you wanted wasn't a role model, what you wanted was a lacky that you wouldn't have to pay to keep an eye on your kids!" He snapped. "I had to sit and help them do their homework, despite having my own, I used to help them with anything they asked, and play fantasy games on the playground out the back."  
"You were not some kind of babysitter! You were my..." she couldn't bring herself to say the word 'son' she had never called him her son in all the time she had him.  
"Don't even call me your son now, you never did when I was growing up with you." Apollo suddenly became very aggressive. "I grew used to that treatment after a while, being your slave basically, but then life decided to throw another knife my way, at that weird houseparty you were having..."

-x-x-

At thirteen, Apollo was fairly certain he shouldn't be putting nine year old children to bed, but he didn't mind any more, it beat listening to the people downstairs, drunkenly boasting about their life. Rana had invited some of the high class housewives from the surrounding neighbourhoods, she was quite a rarity, considering she worked as well as Simon.

Apollo crept downstairs to see if he could pull Simon to one side to say the kids had settled, before he'd retreat to his room to read. When he reached the bottom of the stairs he noticed the door that lead to the living room-kitchen area was. He could hear loud voices and very faint music.  
"What happened with that philanthropy thing you were on about?" One very noisy woman asked.  
"We did it, why do you think we have the boy?" Apollo backed away from the door, he was a charity case to them.

"Oh...hello Apollo." Simon was sober. "Are you heading to bed?"  
"Get away from me!" Apollo sobbed and ran away.  
"Apollo? Oh shit. That stupid bitch. Apollo!"

-x-x-

"I was nothing but a pathetic charity case to you!" Apollo's voice roared, bouncing of the walls around the now crying Rana. "You adopted me as an act of philanthropy! You wanted to adopt me so you could show off to all your friends what a loving caring human being you were!"  
"That's not true!" She screamed at the CD.  
"You didn't love me the way you loved the kids, the ones that were the fruit of your loins, even then you seemed to prefer your work to your home life." Apollo said casually, the anger suddenly drained from his voice. "You are one cold hearted bitch in the insurance world, and I can see now that you were the same to me at home."

"When Simon took me away, not long after you said that horrid thing about the reason I was there...I was so grateful. I am truly sorry he was no longer constantly in your children's lives, but I stayed close to him, and to the kids." Apollo sounded snide. "I still think you are the reason he had his heart attack, you constantly attacked him for years! And now your kids have no father, and I've lost another dad."  
"Shut up!" The woman was making herself feel unwell.

"Did you ever check to see I was ok? No, of course you didn't. Have a good life Rana, keep kicking the ass of the insurance world." Apollo seemed to go very deeply silent. "...I have ended my life. And if I ever meant anything to you, you will heed my last request."

Rana felt bile rise in her throat.

"Please Rana, put your feelings on that piece of paper and mail it to the PO Box, and keep that box on its journey." Then, the CD suddenly fell into complete silence.

-x-x-

"Mom?" She knelt down by Rana, shaking her violently.  
"I...I feel ill...leave me alone." She slapped the girl away. "Just...send the letter and the box. Please..." She groaned. She cradled the CD in her hands, and for a brief second, she felt the pain split that façade that was her face, her life.

* * *

I do apologise for it being shorter than normal, but this was all I could think of in terms of this person, even now I think I'd have committed suicide years ago if this was my life, if I found out someone took me in just to be a glorified babysitter.

Oh, while I remember, I have a blog on Tumblr now, since I needed somewhere I could post updates (the fanfiction account isn't monitored to be me) as always, leave a review, follow my group on Facebook, and check out my blog. You'll get insights into my life, and how it's gonna change as I go to uni and if you're lucky maybe the occasional piece of art! ~ EvilWaffleS

My Tumblr is under my pen name, and my blog is called "EvilWaffleS and life"!


	6. Klavier Gavin

A/N - Ok so a little later than I thought, but hey, been having a bit of a yo-yo style life recently. I feel much better, I'm happy and pain free! So I figured I'd update a story or two over the next few days!

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"One, two, three, four." Apollo sighed. "Wow, the box is either moving slow or people are taking their time." Laid out on the coffee table in front of him were the letters that had made their way to his PO Box. He held back tears, as he recognised the handwriting of Nick and Ema.  
"They're the ones who affected your choice." The conniving voice in his head cooed.  
"Leave me alone!" Apollo yelled, his voice bouncing back off the wall.  
"Why?"  
"Just...leave." Apollo felt a tear escape his eye. He ran a hand through the now almost-black hair and sighed. "Just...fuck...off!"

He took a look in the mirror, the boy that stared back at him looked almost like his young-teen self. He looked almost like that thirteen year old misfit he dressed up as to annoy Rana, on the only occasion she visited her ex-husband and her adoptive son. Dark hair and a black outfit that fit close to his skin restricted his breathing and made him feel a little light-headed and kept that voice in his head subdued.

He closed his eyes, shook his head violently and forced his fist against the glass of his mirror, a tiny crack appeared and a small shard drew blood from his knuckle.

-x-x-

Klavier was storming around his house, slamming into things and breaking anything caught underfoot.  
"What did I do?!" He declared angrily, kicking a coffee mug that had rolled off the table straight into the wall. "Why won't-?" He threw himself down into the sofa. "Why won't mien liebe talk to me?" He threw his fist into the couch cushions.

She wouldn't return his calls, he thought she could share the pain Apollo's death had caused. He didn't want to sound selfish, but that stupid little man had ruined Klavier's relationship from beyond the grave. There was Klavier thinking Apollo was fine with it all.

_Had Ema found the suicide note? _It dawned on Klavier why Ema may not want to talk.

"Ema, liebe, please answer my call. I know how you feel." He left her yet another message, before throwing the phone across the couch. He threw his head into his hands before promptly continuing the rampage through the house until he reached the kitchen. He pulled a bottle of his imported beer from it's plastic ring, cracked the top off and drank half the bottle without a moment's hesitation. He took a deep breath before returning to the living area and pulling his guitar onto his lap.

The guitar that had previously been used to serenade Ema was now playing grim and mournful tunes by its owner's hand.

-x-x-

After nearly an hour there was a hasty knocking at the door. He casually flung the guitar from his lap and leapt up to answer the door with a renewed vigour in the hope Ema was at the other side of the door. He swung it open with far too much force, and there, was a young girl dressed in yellow. Klavier leaped back a little in shock.

"Whoa, this was for Klavier Gavin! _The _Klavier Gavin!" The girl declared.  
"Yes Frau, now what is it?" He had to close his eyes and relax, to prevent himself snapping.  
"A delivery for you." She smiled, holding out the box.  
"I wasn't expecting something...and why is it in a cereal box?" Klavier asked curiously, still, he took the box and leaned it against the inside of the door.

"Whoever sent it you sure was loaded." The girl smiled as she handed a clipboard to him to sign off.  
"What do you mean?" Klavier asked.  
"This box was fast travelled to you! Doesn't come cheap!" The girl was bubbly. "Thanks Mr Gavin." She took the board from him and travelled down his path.

He shook the box curiously, a thing, he noted, that had not changed no matter what his age. When he was five he used to shake presents, now as an adult, despite his better judgement, he shook parcels, even unexpected ones like this. He remembered his brother calling him a fool for shaking them when he first turned up in America. "You do not know what is in them, little brother." Kristoph would warn.

He headed back to the couch and emptied the cereal box, shaking it a few times to let the smaller box slide out.  
"Another?" Klavier turned it a few times until he saw the label. "'M. Horne'" Klavier read aloud. "No idea who that is." Klavier shrugged. He then turned his attention to the small CD and the envelope which had a small bump in the middle.

He plucked the CD from the cushions, investigated it, concluded it would be best not to put it into his CD player until further notice and turned his attention to the envelope. He shook the envelope a few times, watching the small bump slide from side to side before lifting the lip of the envelope from under the flap. He tipped the envelope up, and out slid five guitar picks, picks Klavier hadn't seen in a while. Last time he'd seen them, he'd leant them to Kristoph, to give them to a 'budding guitarist' in his office. They were ones he invested in when he became a serious guitarist, and he hoped the good luck they bought him (he had been using one when his band were recognised and signed up) would rub off on that guitarist.

_Why are my picks in this unusual parcel?_

He pulled the letter from the envelope.  
"Blank." He shook his head, turning the envelope to see the address on the front. "PO box..." He sighed, turning his attention back to the CD.

_The only way to unravel this mystery...is to listen...I guess._

Against his better judgement, and defying his brother's old warnings, he decided he had to investigate, and slotted the disc into the CD player.  
"Hi Klavier." A simple introduction from Apollo this time. "I'm sure I was the last person you were expecting." There was a light giggle. And Klavier resisted the urge to smash his fist into the player.  
"Even in death, you've been causing trouble." He growled.  
"I'm sure a sharp mind such as yours has worked out a reason for Ema's sudden attitude change, assuming she's had one of course."  
"You bastard! She won't speak to me!" He cried out.

"I'm sorry, these messages are intended to be truthful." Apollo didn't sound at all sorrowful. "I figured my death may do the people in these messages a favour, let them change to be better people."  
"There's nothing wrong with me!"  
"I can guess what you've just said." Apollo laughed. "And get your head out your arse, you aren't that special." Apollo was blunt. "Anyways, I'd like to tell my story about you from the start, so shut your snout, sit tight, and listen, agreed?"  
"Agreed." Klavier grumbled and reclined on the sofa.

"Good, now I have a lot about you, so you should be glad you got more than most of the others." Apollo was blunt again. The acid had left his voice now though. "Let me think...ah...better start from the beginning, I remember when I met you, I honestly thought you were Kristoph, I know Kristoph had a brother, he mentioned you in the office once in a while, or commented that you were a good guitarist." Apollo sighed. "I hope you know he was proud of you. Even if he never showed it, I mean, the only other person I heard him crone on about was his pupil, me."

"He had a funny way of showing he was proud." The younger Gavin growled.  
"I know now...I know his pride doesn't mean much, I mean, I don't think he ever was proud...of either of us."  
"Perhaps so." He felt on the same page as Apollo for that brief moment.  
"Like you, I was a guitarist. I mentioned it to Kristoph, so he sent me those picks, they came in quite handy, helped protect my fingers. Helped me improve a little, and I figured that now I'm...gone. I should return property that is not mine." Apollo whimpered and choked back a sob. "Well, I'm not gone right this moment, as I record this. So that doesn't sound...right."  
"Thanks. I suppose." Klavier replied.

"Then I actually met you, the great Klavier Gavin, I have to admit, you meet up to expectations. A genius prosecutor and musician, a good friend too.""Danke." Klavier felt a lapse into speaking German.  
"You inspired loads of kids into music, even Trucy, I remember the arguments between her and her dad about her wanting a guitar." Apollo chuckled. "To make it worse I gave her my guitar. And for a while, all was good."  
"I know.""You were a good friend, a talkative bastard and you bragged a lot, but a good friend none the less." Apollo laughed to himself. "You mocked me when you found out I hadn't been with many women...the whole two of them I've been with, but it was in good jest, and I didn't mind too bad."  
"You needed to get more sex in your life Herr Forehead." Klavier smiled.  
"You often bought me a drink here or there, cheered me up, we discussed cases and things. Like I said, it was good. Your friendship was and still is invaluable."

"There's a 'but' here, isn't there Herr Forehead?"  
"Then I saw the person behind that facade the rest of the world sees."

"For a while...I sympathised with you, I felt the pain you felt about Kristoph...even if to a lesser extent. Then when Daryan went down...I felt something emanating from you."  
"Emanating?" Klavier repeated, confused.  
"You were suddenly filled with a lot of hate. I picked up on it because it's what a lot of kids in the orphanage felt, a hate far beyond that which a child should feel..." Apollo swallowed and there was a pause, as if he was trying to stop himself from crying. "You were seething, your hate directed towards your brother, to the law enforcement system...to yourself. And that scared me." Apollo almost had to force those words out his mouth.  
"You will never understand!" Klavier roared.  
"You think I don't understand. But my parents are dead, and I found out recently my birth may have been the reason they died, I felt...I feel that hate you feel. Yet I didn't push away any help that came my way. I didn't suddenly lose all my motivation...yeah...I lost some...but not all of it."  
"I never lost it all."  
"You didn't play guitar anymore, you just went at home, sat quietly...and brooded." Apollo knew this was true.

"So what happened less than six months ago, why did we suddenly see the old Klavier?" Apollo asked. "The one who wanted to chat up Ema all the time, the one who was a flirt with any and all the women around him, no matter their age. The one who wanted to party again all of a sudden?"  
"I had my time."  
"The rumour is that while you were brooding you turned to some kind of illegal substance, and admitted yourself to rehab. It would explain that period of time where you seemed to vanish. Although there was a rumour that came from your office saying you simply moved back to Germany for a short while, to spend some time with your family, where you could reflect on your older brother's actions with other people who were the same as you." Apollo fell quiet. "I pray the second one is the truth."  
"Why does it matter to you?" Klavier asked. "I was with my family...but again, you are dead, why does it matter to you?"  
"I know I've killed myself, but I suppose at least now you've confessed." Apollo waited again while he thought of the next thing to say.

"How did you get with Ema exactly?" Apollo asked. "I mean, I pieced together the basics, she took one of your gifts, a bunch of roses or something, she took another, she agreed to a drink. Normal couple stuff...then...you ended up as you are."  
"As we are?" Klavier asked.  
"You two aren't in a relationship! You treat her like an escort!"  
"How dare you!" He snarled.  
"You do, you give her sex and gifts in return for her looking pretty on your arm and in those pictures on those tabloid magazine in the supermarket." Apollo decided being as blunt and as truthful as possible would be the best approach to Klavier. "She's the most amazing and beautiful woman, and you treat her like filth."  
"How is giving my love what she wants treating her like filth?" Klavier asked, his body physically convulsing with all the bottled up rage he'd gathered.  
"All women, all girls. They love gifts, but if you want a woman to have any kind of devotion to you, you shouldn't have to buy her." Apollo explained. "Or at least that's what it was at first, you bought her love with the new office, the new computer, the laptop, the car, a little bit of help towards her rent, but that's not the reason you kept lavishing her with gifts. Is it...KG?"

"How do you know that nickname?" Klavier's eyes widened in shock.  
"Betcha wanna know how I know that, don't you?" Apollo mocked, almost as if his inner demon had suddenly taken control. "Klavier, I know that name because I heard that girl in the office that time."

-x-x-

"KG! You dog! While your girlfriend's working downstairs! And in the office!" There was a moan of delight.

Apollo had arrived at the office rather confused. The girl from the desk, his "Typer" (his PA and general dog's body) was not at her desk, outside his office door. Instead, there was a note attached to her desk, saying she'd gone to lunch, just in case Klavier came outside.

There was another moan of ecstasy, even though Apollo was inexperienced in the world of love, he knew that sound.

"Ssh." Klavier hushed the girlish voice. "Or we'll get caught, now sit still or it won't feel too good."

Apollo hadn't dared to open the door to check if his fear was right.

-x-x-

"You gave yourself a nasty little surprise from that girl though, didn't you?" Apollo sneered.

"It didn't come from her!"  
"Maybe it came from another one of your sluts, I don't really care, I do care though that you passed your little infection onto another girl, well, more accurately, your girlfriend."

"Even better, knowing that Ema was confiding in me, knowing she was concerned about that little...problem...she picked up, you told me you were cheating on her!" Apollo was exasperated. "You told me you wanted variety, you even tried to bring these girls...these 'bits on the side' to join in with you and Ema in the bedroom!"  
"I did not!"  
"I don't know what you think of Ema, but I can tell you right now, women aren't like dogs, they aren't there to obey your every command and amuse you!" Apollo snapped. "They don't want gifts, they want to be told they're the one you want!"  
"Shut up!" Klavier called out. "Shut up! Shut up!"  
"You bought her love, you bought her silence. I know she was looking at other people at one point too, you know it as well, don't lie." Apollo remembered this quite clearly, Ema quite boldly commenting on other men as they passed her. "You were buying her to stay, you were stopping her from going to someone that would treat her better."

"Klavier, you made me lie to my closest friend, you confided in me knowing Ema was the best friend I had in the world, knowing I'd never want to break her heart, knowing I'd keep your pathetic scummy dealings with other women a secret!" Apollo fell silent. "Another lie to keep, another opportunity to move closer to the edge, another reason for me to disappear, and take my secret with me." He began to cry.  
"I..." Klavier, for once in his life, did not have the words to say.

"Klavier, I know I've upset you, but please, I beg you to heed a dead boy's last request. The envelope and the blank letter, please, fill that paper with all your heartfelt feelings and thoughts about what I have just said into that letter. Then mail that to the PO Box on the envelope. Please, I beg of you. I miss you, you were a valued friend and inspiration for many." The CD went dead, and silence fell upon Klavier's living room like a thick fog.

-x-x-

"What are you doing here?" She sniffled, her eyes were red and swollen. Klavier was taken aback by the way she looked. No makeup, hair tied into a loose bun – plain and deeply saddened.  
"Frau, did you get a package from -" he was about to say 'Herr Forehead' but stopped himself "-Apollo?"  
"Why the fuck do you care?" She snarled.  
"I got one too."  
"Fuck off whoremongerer!" Ema snapped.  
"Ema! You don't...you don't believe that...do you?"

"You shouldn't call the dead liars." Ema growled. "I told you to leave me alone, I hope he broke your heart, I hope whichever slut you're sleeping with gives you some horrific disease!" She'd normally never wish death or pain on any person, no matter who they were and what they did to her or the people she loved. But she was going insane with the idea she had contributed to her best friend's death, and he had bought to light all the problems she had pretended were non existent or weren't as severe as they were.

-x-x-

He spent over an hour at her door trying to win her around, throughout that time it had dawned on Ema that Klavier had not headed Apollo's request at all. He wasn't taking on board what the boy had said, or mourned his passing, he was simply trying to make it so he could still hit the sack with her.  
"You disgust me." She had told him when he was on his knees at the door, screaming and pleading for mercy from Ema, before she slammed the door in his face and made him swear and curse and promise to never darken her door again.

A few blocks away Trucy tugged down on the handle of her door, desperately hoping that it wouldn't open. To her relief, the handle didn't budge, so she slipped her key into the door, kicked her shoes off and crept across to her room. She didn't want to waste time, so she yanked clothes off her hangers and shoved them into her bag with all her strength. The room stank of wine and grape juice, her father was angry, the whole apartment had an air of drunken rage about it. Without hesitation she hoisted the bag onto her back, rushed out the room and across the living area to the front door. She slammed the door and locked it tight, then, recognising the voice coming from the hall she took off in the opposite direction, away from that voice, away from her own father.

Phoenix thought he saw the flutter of a cape as he turned the corner, but discounted it as his imagination, he was a good distance away, it could have been anything. When he went into the apartment, he'd soon see the trail of clothes that had come free of the tight stuffing of her overflowing bag as she took off. He would then cry, break down in floods of tears.

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A/N ok so another update done! As always please review, follow my blog, like EvilWaffleS on facebook and keep on reading!


	7. Matthew Horne

A/N: So...hi guys (please don't kill me for not updating sooner!). The Christmas period is over and I've decided my New Year's Resolution will be to write as often as I used to, so I have a creative outlet (besides my saxophone) from university.

There is a reason this update has arrived so late, mainly that I have been focusing on improving from the problem that originally inspired me to write this story. When I began writing this, I was in a bad way due to what someone did to me, and I tried to channel some of my feelings and thoughts into the first few chapters of this story, since it helped me to deal with my issues. The support I received and the comments about the realism of Apollo's feelings in the first few chapters filled me with relief, and were enough of an inspiration to help myself out, and recover from what another person made me feel, so thanks to all of you who read this.

I felt brave about writing this, and in a way I felt proud that I had found a way to channel my energy away, and now I am recovering, I hope continued support will help me keep writing and see this story through to the end. Anyways, please enjoy and as always, reviews are appreciated to let me know what you think.

* * *

Ema still hadn't rested, she was still frantic, desperately searching for a glimmer of hope, or her friend's body. With no hope, she wanted to find some solace or to feel closer to him, it was then that she found a record of his father's death, along with where he was buried.  
"Perhaps if I go there, I can feel closer to him." Her voice rose into the dead air around her and sat still, in the deathly silent office around her. People were confused, in mourning of a talented man, of Apollo, and there was a loss of hope floating around in the stillness as well.

-x-x-

"Matthew!" A voice called. "Matthew!" A bashing on the door.  
"Go away!" He grumbled groggily, turning onto his side on the pathetically hard metal bed that squealed beneath him.  
"Matthew!" There was a click of a lock near him, he growled. He twisted round again and there before him at his eye level were pale blue scrubs. "Wake up silly."  
"Leave me the fuck alone!" He growled, desperate for a hit of something, anything, he needed it.  
"Matthew, you know I can't." The voice was more stern, and earned a better response from the man, as he sat himself up on the bed. He was met with a familiar face, the newbie of the centre, a young woman by the name of Catherine, who, bless her little heart, had already been assaulted by one man in the centre and threatened by another and almost strangled by a woman in the month she had been working there.

_...Then again, what do these 'nurses' expect when they have keys to our rooms_

"I thought this place wasn't a prison." The man groaned, his voice an octave lower than it was naturally meant to be.  
"It isn't." The girl said, confused as she set the box she was carrying down on a table nearby.  
"So what's with the shitty prison grade beds, the windows that don't open properly and blinds that don't shut out the light, televisions that don't even work and staff who invade our privacy at will?" He slammed his fist into the mattress and his voice gradually became louder with each statement.  
"You people submitted yourselves!" The girl snapped, her young eyes filled with tears, it was hard to imagine she was only a year younger than the man before her. "And I came to deliver your parcel, which has been screened and checked for any drugs, before you ask or attempt to take it apart, and it's clean. Now good day to you, sir!"

She made an effort to vocalise her disapproval of the man by slamming the door shut behind her.  
"Lock the door!" The man howled. "Stupid bitch." He grumbled to himself as he hoisted himself up , which required far more effort than it should in one so young, and reached for the key before locking the door, he made a point of leaving the key in the lock; it would make a few extra seconds of privacy before they forced the key out the lock anyway.

He paced around the room impatiently for a while, as if he was caged like a zoo animal. In zoo animals though, such behaviour would be deemed 'stereotypic' here, it was 'withdrawal'. He need to be in this place; a building deemed to be the same as the cage a battery hen made itself at home in, that, he had to remember. He needed something to stop the 'withdrawal' symptoms (as far as he was concerned such symptoms didn't exist, there was nothing wrong with him in his mind), it was then that the box caught his eye.

A plain cardboard box, looking almost like the inside packing for something much larger sat atop the table where he ate, alone, everyday. He approached it with caution and shook it rather curiously to reach the same conclusion as the young girl, whatever was in the box wasn't going to be the fix he so desperately wanted.

He wanted to ignore it, wait for the cleverly concealed hit of drugs he needed in another package that should have been arriving the same day. He failed however, since something about the package intrigued him, so he gave up his waiting game for the second parcel and sat at the table with the box.

Much like the previous recipients of the same box, he did the same routine of analysing the next box, noticing the name, tossing the box to the side, then checking the envelope and finally picking up the CD.  
"Nurse!" He called down the hall, Catherine appeared.  
"Oh...it's you, what do you want?" She asked.  
"My package, it contained a CD, I wish to listen to it in the privacy of that box I call home." He didn't mean to sound sarcastic, however the look on her face implied it had come across as such.

The CD player was a poor quality device but it functioned, so he plugged it in and sat as close to the speaker as he could, his paranoia telling him to make sure nobody else could hear.

"Man...what happened to you?" The voice was like a knife to the throat.  
"Apollo!" The man declared in delight, almost as if Apollo was in the flesh before him.  
"Don't be so excited." Apollo knew this boy better than he knew himself. "I assume this got to you, I simply had this sent to the last address Chastity told me over a year ago, when I last asked them about you and I still make the effort to go and see them often."  
"Ch-Chastity!" A name that struck a chord, deep in his heart.  
"They were ok you know, when I saw them last, Chastity and Meghan, I mean." Apollo said reassuringly. "And before I go any further, I should probably tell you I'm not."  
"W-what!?"  
"More of that later, but first, I want you to sit, and listen, don't twitch, don't do anything, just sit still!" The voice snapped.

"You were a little older than me. Almost three years old when the one year old baby boy, me, was left in the orphanage in the middle of the night." Apollo sighed. "None of the kids knew who bought me there, they mocked me, they made fun of me when we were a little older, because I was there alone. No idea who my parents were, I wasn't taken away like all of you, I was dumped there, nobody loved me." He whimpered. "That's what you all said anyways."  
"What do you mean 'you all'? I never-!"  
"You did it too, for a while." Apollo fell quiet. "Then they started beating me."  
"They were horrid." A vague flash of memory flooded to the man's mind.

-x-x-

_Apollo's little, why are the bigger kids beating him?_

Matthew rushed forward to see the commotion. Apollo was on the floor, cuddling himself to protect his softer sections from receiving more blows.  
"Nobody loves you! Your files are empty!" A girl spat, kicking him hard in the hip.  
"S-shut up!" Apollo cried out in pain through the floods of tears streaming down his face.  
"I need to help him, but the big kids are far to big for me to fight whilst in a crowd like that." He began to scan the room in a panic. He couldn't get near the crowd, or he'd be pulled in.

A howl of pain erupted from Apollo as Matthew filled the last of the balloons he had found with paint from the bottles they'd been using earlier.  
"Jack?" He knelt down and glanced under the table to see Apollo's room mate. "What are you doing?"  
"I'm hiding, they said they'd kill Apollo if I went to get help." He sniffled.  
"Don't be silly, hey give me your slingshot, I want to help him." Jack shaking, held out the slingshot.

He loaded the first balloon, filled almost to bursting with green paint, he took aim at the ringleader, a girl named Jess, a snobbish brat.  
"Hey!" Matthew called out, attracting the attention of the crowd just in time to launch the first balloon straight at the ringleader's face. The balloon burst upon impact, coating her with a think layer of green paint. Her immediate reaction was to cry out. Whilst the others were distracted trying to stop her crying, he took aim at the others, by the time they all fled to go get the warden of the orphanage, they'd all been coated in a rainbow of paint.

"Hey man, you ok?" He knelt down by Apollo.  
"I...I think so." He groaned in pain as he tried to sit up.  
"Here." He stood back up and held out his hand, when Apollo took it, he hoisted him up on to his feet. "Let's go find Sommer, she'll heal you up." He smiled.  
"T-thanks, but why are you helping me?" The young Apollo asked helplessly.  
"Those big kids shouldn't have attacked you." He smiled.

-x-x-

"From then on, we grew as friends, I became part of your friendship group, with Jack and Chastity." Apollo sighed.  
"You were a good guy, just a little quiet." The man on the metal bed smiled at the CD player.  
"Jack was adopted out when I was, when we were eleven, we'd just moved into the new school, we were finally growing up." Apollo knew what he was going to say wasn't Matt's fault but he had to know never the less. "Rana, my foster mother, she made me transfer to a private school, I longed for you guys, to return to the old school, I was desperate."  
"Why man, you knew they wouldn't listen!"  
"I was gone for...a year, then when my foster parent's relationship broke down, my foster dad moved me back into the school, as I'd been begging for a year."  
"Apollo..." Matthew knew where this was going.  
"You changed."

-x-x-

"Apollo?" The girl had been looking at him curiously for a while now, she was sure it was him, he even had the same confident air about writing in the English class as her old friend. She chased him down the hall and after another call he turned around. "Apollo!" She declared in delight, wrapping her arms around his neck and bouncing up and down in delight.  
"Chastity!" He declared in delight.  
"W-what are you doing back here?" She asked over excitedly.  
"It's a long story, but hey, I finally got my wish."  
"Look, we'll go find Jack, ok?" She snatched his wrist and went charging down the hall, Apollo in tow.

"What the hell is wrong with you man!?" Jack yelled at Matthew.  
"Fuck off Jack!" He yelled back.  
"What's happening with your eyes?" Jack asked curiously.  
"Leave me, the fuck alone!" He grabbed Jack's collar and lifted him into the air.  
"Guys!" Apollo screamed out, breaking free of Chastity's grip despite her protests. Jack was dropped to the floor and Matthew went pale white.  
"A-Apollo!" He cried out. Then turned and fled.

-x-x-

"You duped us good you know." Apollo's voice rang out above the memory.  
"Duped?"  
"You were older than us, and rumours were travelling in our year group, Chastity picked up on them first." Apollo recalled. "'Hey Apollo, have you heard about Matthew's friends?' She'd began, 'there's rumours they're doing drugs!' We all cast it off, none of us entirely sure what these rumoured drugs were."  
"I knew that was where this was going!" Matthew flared with anger.  
"Chastity had been adopted too, but she grew so close to you you both decided to start a relationship, and Jack and me became even better friends to you when we were in high school." Apollo should have sounded happy, but his voice was heavy with sorrow.

"When we, Jack, Chastity and I, were seventeen, I recall being sat in homeroom. I was reading a textbook for my advanced maths class when Chastity came rushing in, tears in her eyes." Apollo felt a distinct pain when he recorded this section of the CD. "We still had no idea about you, and your...current situation, even then."  
"Chastity was crying?" At seventeen, he was with Chastity still, what happened then? He couldn't remember.  
"I thought you and her had had another argument..." Apollo was quiet for a brief moment.

"Except you didn't argue, did you?"  
"I don't remember, did we?" His memory had gone as of late.  
"She was pregnant, seventeen years old and with baby."  
"Meghan!" He declared in response.  
"You were growing distant from us at this point, me and Jack, along with Alia and Trinity took it upon ourselves to support her, and to find out about you and what was going on." Apollo's voice had suddenly lost all emotion.

"Your girlfriend was pregnant, your friends desperately trying to get you to show her the love and care that she needed and you decided to do what?" The lawyer's voice suddenly rose in volume and pitch and anger took over. "You were getting off your face!"  
"I..." He wanted to be angry, scream back, but he couldn't, not only would it attract the attention of the nurses but he knew he couldn't, he had no excuse.  
"Your girlfriend, she needed you. Your friends, you betrayed us. You saved me, you took me in, you gave me friends, and you lied to me, you were selfish." Apollo was crying on the CD. "She didn't mean it, but Chastity was causing me additional stress I didn't need, turning up at mine and my dad's door, in floods of tears complaining of a problem with you, or a problem with her unborn child."  
"Apollo...I'm so sorry." Matthew cried out.

"Then I got the phone call none of us wanted. You were desperate for cash, we knew that, since your only acknowledgement of the baby in Chastity's womb was money...but you were arrested." Apollo knew he probably wouldn't remember this event, his brain long since scrambled by the drugs. "Caught in possession of an illegal substance."  
"I...don't remember."  
"You were in jail when your daughter, my god-daughter, Meghan was born, and you've never even seen her, not through want of us trying."  
"What are you on about?"  
"Do you remember when I went to visit you in prison? Meghan was pushing a year old by this point."

-x-x-

"Apollo..." To say that Matthew was only nineteen, a year older than Apollo and Chastity; he looked aged well beyond the years. It was rare that Matthew still received visits.  
"Man, you look old." Apollo said honestly as he took his seat.  
"What are you doing here?" His voice was husky, the abstinence from the drugs Apollo assumed.  
"I hear it's almost time for you to leave here, maybe you should go see Meghan in a centre, like Chastity asked."  
"That bitch is fucking Jack, I couldn't give a shit what she wants."  
"So you know about that..." Apollo fell silent for a while, this was a low, Matthew was his friend, even after all the stress and pain he had caused, and here he was denying his daughter her father.

"Chastity's relationship shouldn't change the fact her daughter needs her daddy." Apollo was only being honest.  
"I'll see her." Matthew grumbled.  
"Promise me." Apollo held out his hand.  
"Promise." He shook his hand with a firm grip.  
"And do yourself a favour, get off the drugs, don't come back here again." Apollo had begun to take a keen interest in law, and he knew it was highly likely Matthew would be back here.

-x-x-

"You broke that promise, and in all honesty, I can't believe Chastity kept giving you chances right up until a year ago." Apollo sighed. "I decided to help you out, lend you some cash I scrounged up from my part time job, and where did you spend said money?"  
"I..."  
"Legal highs! Anything and everything! You were always at nightclubs smoking or snorting something!" He fell silent.

"I was torn." Apollo began to cry again. "My best friend was doped off his face all the time, and if people found out about you, I could lose my scholarship, I could be rejected from law school." Apollo whimpered. "But you needed me."  
"Man, please don't, please don't say what I think you're going to say, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!"  
"My foster father had left me some money, just enough to live comfortably for the first year of college, you stole it all. You bastard!" Apollo roared out.  
"I didn't mean to...I mean...the money was just sat there."  
"I suppose I can look upon it that at least you admitted yourself into rehab with said money, but you didn't did you? You were picked up and dumped in one by the police." Apollo was sobbing.

"You stole my college money, I had to work two jobs and do a full time study just to live! Yet I still loved you, I still cared!" Apollo fell quiet.  
"I'm sorry man! I'm sorry!" Matthew was in floods of tears himself. Some of the things Apollo had said had become nothing but distant memories, surrounded by a thick cloud of drug induced fog. His daughter, his girlfriend, Jack, Apollo...his childhood, all were rushing back like a stampede of elephants.

"What can I do to repay you?" Matthew began to pace around his room. "Please, anything, just say."  
"It's too late to repay me." The voice fell flat, silent once more.  
"What?"  
"I killed myself." He was blunt and to the point.  
"No! No! No! No!" He screamed out, crying.  
"It wasn't just you, this box is making its way around to the people who influenced me take this decision, there are people on here from my past, and from my present." Apollo was honest, he didn't want Matthew to make the decision to die, he wanted to change his life, scare him into it. "I need you to understand something Matthew, this box isn't designed to ruin your lives, this is a warning, change. Please, please you daughter needs her dad, she's a beautiful girl, and you only have one life, don't disappear into a drug haze. Stop cruising through various rehab clinics you admitted yourself to you wasteful junkie, and think about the lives of those who need you the most, instead of your selfish little bubble." There was a growl at the end.  
"I promise! I promise! Just please! Tell me you're kidding! Tell me you're not dead!"  
"I want you to do something Matthew, there is a person who is collecting the letters from the PO Box written on the envelope. They are arranging my funeral, I asked them to collect the true feelings of the box's recipients for the final event of my life. I implore you."

-x-x-

The nurses sedated the crying and howling Matthew, assuming he was desperate for another hit of something. The CD was in shattered pieces on the desk, the sealed envelope containing the feelings of Matthew for the CD, the friend he longed to see after so many years and never will again, stained with spots of blood from where Matthew had been smashing the CD.

"Poor thing." Catherine had come into the room the following morning. "Wonder why you took such a major relapse all of a sudden." She glanced across at the table and the fragmented CD upon it. "I knew the CD player was a bad idea." Matthew continued to sleep before her. She simply took the box into her hands and the letter and headed to the mail department.

-x-x-

"I need to go somewhere." Her head was low as she stood before her chief.  
"Where?"  
"I need to be alone." Ema was crying again, it had become a common sight recently, the death of Apollo and the lack of a body had taken its toll on her.  
"Ema, take the rest of the day off, in fact, take tomorrow off too." The woman rose and placed a calming hand on her shoulder.  
"I...that won't be necessary, I will be in, in the morning, I just need to deal with a problem today, I beg."  
"Ok, be safe." The woman smiled, her face sincere, her smile warm.

Ema stopped the car at the bottom of the hill, the gates to the cemetery part way up the hill. She had made an effort to get changed, she didn't think her usual attire of lab coat and skirt was appropriate. She locked the car door and trekked up to the gate, she had no idea where the grave was, so began her search at the graves immediately in front of the gates.

-x-x-

"It's been a long time." Apollo knelt down, placing the roses, the flowers he remembered smelling as a child all the time, in front of the gravestone. "I know what I'm doing is wrong. I just...I need to know whether or not it's my time to give up hope of living in this realm, or to give up and head to the one where you call home." He reached out and touched the headstone, ran his fingers along the golden letters that spelled out his father's name.

"I wish I knew you..." He sighed heavily. The graves around him were not pauper's graves, and neither was his father's, clearly the last of this man's money was put into making his grave a sight to impress for his son. The picture etched into the gravestone was one that always bought a smile to his face, it always gave him a memory of the smell of cotton candy that had often filled his nostrils as a baby.

-x-x-

She'd been descending down to the bottom of the hill when she noticed the grand graves at its base, and immediately she knew she had found the grave she had been looking for, etched in golden letters visible from this high up was the name of Apollo's father.  
"There's a person there...maybe a relative of Apollo's or his father's?" She said to herself before calling out. "Hey!"

She had begun to rush down the hill, but before she reached the bottom, the person had disappeared, almost as if he had vanished into thin air.  
"I wasn't imagining things, who was that person?" Ema quickly scanned the area around her before kneeling down at the grave. "What pretty flowers." Then she sat down in front of the grave and patiently stared at the stone, admiring its beauty and feeling closer to Apollo.

-x-x-

Apollo sighed with relief, he'd not been spotted bolting off behind a nearby tree.  
"Ema? I miss you..." He whispered, before slipping off to a back exit of the cemetery.

* * *

A/N So yeah, you have my word that I'll be writing more often, as always PM me 'When Was Your?' questions (and nagging if you feel I overlooked yours) or leave them in reviews as I'm looking for a good choice to write about. And also as always, like my page on Facebook for various updates and things :D

Hope you've enjoyed reading ~ EvilWaffleS


	8. Trucy Wright

A/N: This is a little shorter than normal, so my apologies, but as always, please enjoy and leave reviews :)

* * *

When it came to sending it to Trucy, he'd always known it was better to send it to her boyfriend's house than back to the Anything Agency, partly because Phoenix would now know what was inside the box, and his love for his daughter would probably cause him to hide the box. This would be the start of the third week the box was making its circuit round the city, leaving a trail of truth to the people it met.

"Trucy dear." There was a knock on the door and the soft voice interrupted her silent sulking.  
"What is it?" She mumbled, barely loud enough to be audible.  
"You have a package deary, it may be from your father." With that, the bedroom door opened and a silent, short brown haired figure appeared in the crack.  
"I don't think this is from daddy." Trucy sniffled, inspecting the label on the box. "He always hand writes the details on a box."

Recently it had become awkward in the house of her boyfriend, Asher. She'd spent more time there than in her own home or on circuit since in the last six months of her relationship. She sought solace in the boy when she met him whilst out doing tours. It was six weeks into an eight week tour around major stadiums in North America; she had returned home to perform in the Phoenix stadium when she met him. He was a musician, not an amazingly talented one, on an open-mic night the night before her show, he also doubled as a stage hand setting up for rehearsals and concerts and shows on the night. He knew what it was like trying to balance school, family and the shows they performed and he was handsome, so in Trucy's eyes, he was perfect. The fact he looked like Klavier was a bonus.

But that wasn't the awkwardness, Asher's mother had welcomed her into the home permenantly after the fight with her father, but of course, she had contacted Phoenix to hear his side and certainly wasn't happy when she found out about the abortion, and it took all in her power not to throttle both of them there and then. She too had been tempted to throw both of them out, but at a promise they wouldn't engage in any sexual activity at the house until further notice they would stay. Then of course, the news reports about Apollo had reached Trucy's ears, she was deeply saddened and had recently become almost mute and reclusive, so it was only fair that for now, Trucy was taken off school and left to mourn.

"Honey I need to head to work." Asher's mother worked part time in the school where her son worked.  
"Mm..." Trucy made a faintly audible sound to say she had acknowledged that and headed back into the darkness of Asher's room.  
"Poor girl." The woman mumbled to herself before speaking up. "Asher's going to be home about four this evening ok?" No response was given to this.

-x-x-

She'd investigated the box intently, before taking the CD and inserting it into Asher's CD player.  
"Trucy, I take note of the fact you are still a child when I say this." The CD began and for the first time in nearly three weeks, she perked up at the sound of Apollo's voice.  
"Apollo?"  
"Hey Truce." His voice was soft, broken with pain and grief when he was recording it. "I bet you hate me now, huh?"  
"What do you mean?" She asked, gently wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.  
"I want you to listen to what I have to say, so take a seat and get comfortable."

"So, let's begin with about a year ago now." Apollo's voice was straight, no sign of emotion was there. "You and I were one heck of a team, huh?"  
"Uh-huh." She nodded, sitting on the bed cross legged.  
"It was fun to have you, a little sister of sorts, running around at my side, causing trouble but still putting a smile on my face at work." Apollo laughed to himself before returning to the dead-pan voice. "Then things started to change, at first, you were disappearing in the evening after your tour, none of us really saw it as anything other than going to have fun with friends."  
"Well, I was...at first." Trucy responded.  
"Then you were disappearing for longer periods of time, every Friday evening without fail. Then gradually you were disappearing overnight, and then for the whole weekend."  
"Well me and Asher were getting more serious." She smiled.

"You're a secretive little devil, I'll give you that, but when Ema and me spotted you that day, I think that even though you knew you couldn't lie to me you still wanted to try."

-x-x-

He took a seat at his desk and waited, Ema reclining on the sofa opposite whilst she waited for the kettle to boil.  
"What are you planning on asking?" She asked.  
"Who the boy was for a start." Apollo replied.  
"Maybe she's started dating, I was about her age when I first went on a date with a boy." Ema smiled.  
"She's been secretive about it if that's the case."  
"You can't blame the girl. I kept my dating history from my sister, never told her until it got serious with a guy." Ema smiled. "Damn, she's not very lucky though is she, not like she could lie to you." Ema giggled.

"Hey Trucy." As if on cue, she walked in as soon as Ema stopped giggling.  
"Hey 'Pollo, Ema." She nodded to them both.  
"So have you been anywhere nice?" Apollo asked as Ema scurried off to the kitchen.  
"Just to the park, with a friend." His hand immediately shot for his wrist as it tightened around him.  
"Try again." He smiled as he began to fiddle with the bracelet.  
"Oh...crap..." Trucy paled.  
"I saw you, as did Ema by the way." Apollo smirked.  
"Oh god, please don't tell daddy!" Then she cracked and explained about Asher.

-x-x-

"I kept my promise, I left it for you to tell your dad about Asher when you were ready."  
"I know."  
"And you've got to admit, my reaction was better than his." Apollo smirked. "I've never seen a man babble at himself for an hour like that, scared his little girl was going to grow up."  
"Yeah..."  
"When we met Asher, I wasn't sure what to make of him, he seemed okay at first." Apollo sighed. "But he was lazy, if he wasn't doing a show, he wasn't interested in life."  
"No he wasn't!" Trucy leapt to her defence, as she did every time someone said something bad about Asher.

"He seemed nice, smitten on you, an okay musician, sweet kid all in all. Or at least, that's what I thought at first." Apollo's voice went serious once more. "You were a busy girl since you were learning all those tricks and going on tour all the time, and you were a teenager and in love, so I knew you wouldn't have much time for your father and me anymore, but I didn't expect any of those things to happen." Apollo went silent for a moment.  
"You always came to me when you had a problem." Apollo's voice rung true in her head. "Why?"  
"Because..." Trucy sniffled, at some point she had begun to cry.  
"Is it because I was trustworthy, or because you knew I was there all the time, or because you knew I wouldn't tell your dad anything over fear of upsetting him?"  
"I..." She fell quiet. "...the last one, to be honest."  
"Every argument you and he had, even the one where he hit you, you came to me for help. I told you what little I knew about how relationships worked, and hoped that'd be all you need, but you'd soon be back, telling me he'd done something else stupid to you." Apollo seemed angry, but deep down in his voice she could tell it was laced with concern. "I didn't know what to say or do!"  
"I'm sorry!" She threw her head into her hands and wailed.

By the time she had stopped sobbing, she had to skip the CD back to the beginning and listen from where she stopped.  
"Let's forget about Asher for a moment, let's forget about all of the bad things I could say for a brief moment." His voice went soft. "You are a beautiful young girl, a talented magician and to top it off, you're an honour student, you have the world at your feet, and enjoy it."  
"Thanks Apollo." She sniffled.  
"You know what happened to me, don't you?"  
"Yes..." She sniffled.  
"I'm sorry." He was genuinely sincere. "It isn't just you that influenced this choice, and you weren't a major influence, so I hope you will continue listening and take that in your stride." Apollo thought it would settle her and encourage her to continue listening.

"I'm proud of you, and of your magic." Apollo laughed a little to himself. "Even if those tricks endangered you or worse, a participant of your show, but the worse thing you ever did was bring those animals in." Apollo went quite.  
"That was a mistake, I never meant to hurt that girl's puppy in that trick on the pier." Trucy was silent.  
"You didn't even want to pay the vet bill, and when I advised you to pay, me and your father left you the money, at the promise of you paying us back and not doing anymore tricks involving animals, you never gave us the money, so do a decent thing and pay your dad back." Apollo sighed.

The next bit came after a deep silence, when Apollo had recorded this track, he didn't want to have to cover her pregnancy, or admit that it was his doing that had caused her father's attitude change towards her.  
"As responsible as you are, I can't believe you were silly enough for unprotected sex." Apollo sighed.  
"It wasn't unprotected!" Trucy cried out.  
"No sorry, the condom split and your contraception failed" Apollo had always been sceptical of this, and before his bout of depression he had discovered the truth. "You weren't using the contraception, were you?"  
"Yes I was!"  
"Diaphragms don't work when they're still in boxes on your bedside table." Apollo growled.  
"Ach..."  
"You stupid girl..." Apollo sighed.

"Well I did the right thing, didn't I?" Trucy cried out.  
"I know what you're going to say, and no you didn't do the right thing, not in my eyes anyway." Apollo had strict views on unsafe sex and unwanted pregnancies.  
"Then what would you have-?" She was getting angry but stopped part way through "Oh..."

-x-x-

"Trucy, I don't think you should go with this." Apollo didn't want to be at this clinic.  
"I can't keep it." She rubbed her tummy.  
"Well, you could." Apollo mused, remembering the plight of a particular friend and his partner, not able to have children. "Put it up for adoption, think of all those childless couples who can't have their own kids, like my friend."  
"Oh, and how will I tell daddy?" She snapped.  
"The same way you told me." Apollo replied calmly, as if she wasn't yelling at him.

"I don't want to get bloated and fat, and then end up stretched down there." She sulked.  
"Well you should have been safer, or took the morning after pill the day after the condom split shouldn't you?" He said it with no hate or anger.  
"I know alright!" She snapped. "Look just let me do this." She snarled.  
"Fine, whatever." Apollo gave up his argument.  
"Will you come with me?" She asked, looking at quite girls, some alone and some with boyfriends, heads down and shuffling away.  
"I...I can't Trucy, I'm sorry." Apollo wanted to support her, but he couldn't bring himself to.  
"Promise me you won't tell daddy."  
"I kept your promises before didn't I?" As she was called up, Apollo smiled falsely, and when she entered the room, he cringed.

-x-x-

"I still think you did wrong, you could have brought joy into another person's life, but you are young, and much like I'm sure I was as a teen, you are selfish." Apollo growled.  
"I am not!"  
"Your father, if you'd told him, wouldn't have been mad for long." Apollo was being honest. "He probably would have been proud; his daughter had made a mistake, but that mistake was going to result in an innocent life that would have bought joy into the world of someone else."  
"It's too late now."  
"I know it's too late now, but I beg of you if something similar should happen again, please consider another option." Apollo whimpered.

"I know what I did was selfish." Apollo was honest. "I know I shouldn't have done this but please understand that you, and the other people this box has made its way to, and will make its way to, have made my life not worth it."  
"I don't think you're selfish. I am, I was." Trucy whimpered. "I'm sorry I made you lie."

"If it gives you comfort, you were not the worse, like I said before. Oh and Trucy, I love you, and wish you well in the future."  
"Thanks..."  
"Please do what I ask, fill out your feelings on the piece of paper and mail them to the PO Box, all you have to do is post it." Apollo was quiet for a brief moment and she slid from the bed to switch the CD player off when his voice perked up again.

"I'm sure a tiny little voice in your head has wondered whether this box has been sent to your dad, right?" Apollo asked.  
"It had popped up." Trucy whimpered.  
"He was the first recipient, and I'm sorry, but I told him about the abortion." She thought she'd be angry but was relieved.

It now made sense, her father was mad, but if Apollo was right, then he would calm down and forgiveness would follow. She was angry at Apollo but she knew her vain hope that with his death, her secret would die too, would not come to pass. She hoped that now she would have a chance to move on, as much as it pained her that she had to lose the only person she considered her brother before hand.

"Hey Truce, I'm home!" She sprang into action at the sound of Asher's voice, she had a new found respect for Apollo's wishes, if it was intended solely for her, she would not allow anyone, ever her boyfriend to listen to the CD. She snatched the CD from the player and pulled the power cord from the wall, quickly pushing the disc under her pillow to be hidden later.

-x-x-

"Apollo...how many people influenced your choice." Ema was tapping her pen on her notebook. She'd been keeping her own personal set of notes on everything to do with Apollo that she had been a part of, learnt or seen in a desperate hope to find the secret of where his body was. "Who was that boy who was at the grave site as well...?" She reached for the phone.

"It's me again." She began.  
"Oh hello Ema, can I help?" The chirpy female voice began.  
"I need you to check something, can you tell me if there are any other relatives of my deceased friend?"  
"Two seconds..." There was a clunking sound as the phone was lowered to the desk. Ema began scrawling out a few other notes. "Ok, well it seems my bosses wanted to continue looking into his family tree, see if there's anyone who can take on his inheritance, seems he has friends in high places." The girl giggled.  
"His name pops up everywhere." Ema agreed.

"Well we don't know who his mother is." The girl began. "Seems she's a bit of an enigma, there's a record of his adoption, but you probably know of the family, seems the son – younger than Apollo – was in trouble with the law. Liam Justice?"  
"I'll check the records." Ema made a note.  
"They're of no interest of us, since they're not entitled to anything."  
"How about biological family?" Ema asked urgently.  
"None as far as we've found." The girl replied solemnly.  
"Alright thanks, I'll call you if I need anything else." She looked at the name of Apollo's 'brother', he would be of no use to her, she knew the name, busted him for underage drinking and one of her colleagues was currently investigating a rape he was accused of performing. The boy would not be willing to speak to her at all, and she was glad, a part of her didn't want to see him either, snobbish brat that he was.

"Oh Apollo." She sighed heavily. "Why can I not find you, or this person who's meant to be doing your funeral, or this mystery boy at your father's grave?"

* * *

A/N So yeah...decided I'd finish this story first and post regular(ish) chapter updates providing work flow/revision from uni permits. As always, leave me a review and let me know how I'm getting on ~ EvilWaffleS


	9. Sasha Justice

A/N: Oh god, I'm so sorry! University got a bit on top of me, but it is over now, I took my last exam, and I have given my boyfriend permission to slap me across the back of the head if I don't update my stories at least once a week :D

* * *

He was tired now, he was ill and he wanted to go home. No t to the apartment, but _home_. He knew anywhere could be a house, somewhere to feel safe and warm, but home was where your heart was and that was with Trucy and her father, in the Wright Anything Agency. He whimpered a little as he continued to change the bandages, looking out the window across the city.

The sky was as dark and gloomy as he felt. It was night, and it had done nothing but rain all day. He used to love hearing the rain against the windows, it was relaxing when he worked more than fifteen hours a day, doing cases. Now, it made him recoil in horror, cry and dance with the idea of death once again.

"You did this." The voice reminded him. "I told you there was a way out of it, did I not?"  
"Leave me alone." He grumbled, his voice had lost all passion.  
"But I am correct, I told you to kill yourself, did you do it?"  
"Leave me the fuck alone!" He banged his fist against the window, a tiny crack appearing on the fragile and weak glass window.  
"You chose to hide the truth! You chose to send those messages! You chose to make everyone around you as sad as you are angry at yourself!"  
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" He howled, distressed.

Ema had seen him, at the cemetery. Now he barely left home, he ordered food via the internet, then hides his face when the delivery driver turns up. He had found a card for an additional bank account he had used as a student, to get his grant paid in. He was using that card just to pay for food and soda, a thing he desperately craved.

How long had he been in there? How long had it been since his box began making its rounds?

_I don't know! Days mean nothing to me now, time means nothing. I simply exist being crushed by depression. I miss home, I miss Phoenix and Trucy! I miss everyone!_

-x-x-

Her breasts hurt, bad. She hated the pain of being beautiful. Still, she had the money, and the status which required her to be beautiful. Her mother was a world famous lawyer, well she was.

_Lately, she's just a drunk and she's addicted to painkillers._

She sent her mother to rehab, her mother did not protest, which confused her. Her mother was a strong and powerful woman, stubborn and headstrong as they get. Yet when she went to fetch her mother from her room, the woman's arm hung limp between them as she held her wrist, leading her away. She had packed, but not enough for a month's stay in rehabilitation, so yet again, she found herself bringing a suitcase of extra clothes to the rehab clinic.

When her mother had left, she had provided the money for her boob-job, after all, the doctor had decided on the most beautiful implants, which would make her breasts finally stand out. They were in now, and they hurt, she'd have loved her mother being with her when she went to that appointment, or now, to cheer her up. She wanted her mother's cakes, the cooks couldn't cook them, and they would cheer her up no end.

The only things in her mother's bag when she had loaded her into the car was a picture frame containing a picture of her, her son and daughter, a CD and a single change of clothes. It was hardly a surprise the clinic had woke her that morning, asking to deliver more clothes. She was severely hung over, there was no point denying that she enjoyed partaking in the parties of her friends, where the older siblings of her friends, or even the parents, would bring alcohol. Her mother wouldn't, but whilst she wasn't there, anything went.

She twisted in her bed to stretch, almost slapping the boy next to her in the face, she laughed to herself, Cal, that was his name, was the one person she relied on for supplying alcohol to a party. He wasn't her boyfriend, she didn't need one of those, what she needed was sex, and a boy willing to supply it in copious amounts, that was him. This had been the first time she had let him sleep next to her after doing the deed, and she had to admit, it was comfy.

"Hey, Cal, wake up!" She shook him, he grumbled and twisted to face her.  
"Well, good morning." He smirked.  
"How much did we drink last night?"  
"Heck if I know." He laughed. "Sex was great though."  
"I'm surprised you can still get it up." She smirked. "With all the alcohol you drink."  
"Well, trust me, I can. Let me show you." He wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her onto his lap.  
"I need to go somewhere, I don't have time." She complained.  
"You can't drive."  
"I know, I'm gonna call mum's driver."  
"Sure I can't tempt you?" He purred, voice like liquid silk.  
"No."  
"Well you're no fun." He feigned being hurt.

"Look, can I trust you to help get rid of any people that didn't quite make it home?"  
"Of course, but what's in it for me?" He smiled, a Cheshire cat smile.  
"Well..." She leaned down, her rather ugly and aching breasts balancing against his face, her pelvis sliding down to rest on his. "Then I may be interested."  
"Deal." He said without hesitation. "You call the driver, we'll get dressed and see the damage, ok?"

There were people everywhere, in every room, in varying states of dress. She had found one of her friends in the bathroom with two lads, passed out in the bath tub. She carefully negotiated her sleeping friend from the two boys before tapping her awake.  
"Nngh?" Her eyes shot open.  
"Good night was it?" She giggled.

Cal and her friend promised to help chase the people out of the house before the cleaners arrived, then her friend was to return home, and Cal to wait in her room.  
"You can't make too much noise, in case my brother comes back or the cleaners hear you." She urged him.  
"Yeah, yeah, I hear you." He smiled.

She gathered up as many outfits as could fit into the suitcase she had selected for her mother. She had an eye for fashion, and had designed most of her mother's clothes. So it was hardly a surprise her mother had a good taste. She pulled the suitcase downstairs and to the door, waiting for the call from her mother's driver.

"Ma'am." She spun round. "I hope you don't mind." He was stood behind her, his thick English accent almost hanging in the air.  
"George you scared me!"  
"I found this package on the drive." He held the box out.  
"It's a cereal box, throw it in the trash."  
"Ma'am I don't think this is a normal cereal box, it is addressed to you for a start." She snatched the box from him.

She carried the box to the car as George wheeled the suitcase out after her and loaded it into the car. He had selected the traditional car you'd think of when you say the word 'Chauffer', a limousine style vehicle, where he was separated from her by a pane of thick shaded glass. She tore open the box as they set off, the clinic was over an hour away, and she could get settled during the trip.  
"You appear to have had a good night ma'am, if you don't mind me saying." Sometimes, it was hard for her to remember that George was only a few years older than her, he wasn't bad looking, if she didn't have Cal, he'd be an option.  
"I'm having another one tomorrow night, if you're not working and would like to carry on." She glanced down at the box between her thighs.  
"Perhaps I will."  
"Let me know when we're nearly there." She pressed the button on the intercom, it was how she communicated with him whilst they were travelling, his was connected by pressing a button, then press it again to switch it off. She heard the click as he switched his side of the intercom off. The best thing about the vehicle was she couldn't hear his weird smooth jazz on his CD player, she had her own in the back.

As soon as the blank CD dropped into her lap, she placed her drink on the side table next to her seat and picked it up. Then squealed and promptly dropped it. It was another blank CD, the box looked a lot different this time, so she had not suspected a similar package to the one that seemed to have upset her mother.

"George." She pressed the intercom. "Please don't bother me until we're there, buzz me when we're there. I'll sort stuff out. I need to listen to something private."  
"Of course." And he would be true to his word, he disconnected the intercom to ensure he wasn't tempted to listen in to what she was listening to.

-x-x-

"Hi Sasha." The voice began.  
"Oh..._you_." She growled. "Best thing you've done for my family is drop dead." She snarled at the voice.  
"I'm sure you just said something derogatory – you may not understand that word – something...nasty about me"  
"You bastard I'm not that stupid!" She snarled.

"Well when you're quite finished, chill out, take some tablets to cure your hangover and take a comfy seat. I want you to listen, consider it the only thing you need to do for me now I'm gone. I couldn't care less if you didn't attend my funeral." Apollo was honest in this recording, truly and deeply honest, he knew it was the only way he could get her to listen.  
"Fine." She scowled.

"When I was young, a couple came to the orphanage, everyone was really excited, and there were hushed tones amongst the older children that these people had money and the lady was already famous." Apollo began. "Your mother wasn't all that young looking, and her husband relatively plain, but we orphans knew no matter what the person, we were expected to make an effort."  
"Well, your parents were dead and my mother and father were your only chance of salvation." The girl replied to the voice on the disk snottily.  
"They immediately blew off the older kids, the older teenagers that flocked around their ankles and rushed up to them. They didn't even glance at the really tiny infants, the babies and the like, instead, she focused on the younger teens such as myself. We kept ourselves to ourselves, especially those of us who had been there since we were babies, as far as we were concerned, we'd lost our chance the second we'd stopped being babies."

"Yet, your mother was showing more of an interest in our group than any others." Apollo paused. "Even back then she expected perfection 'that child has a mole on its face, that child has the wrong coloured hair, that child can't colour in between the lines' she was pedantic and she was picky, but eventually, she settled on the small brunette boy huddled in the corner, reading."

"She could have picked anyone, you just got lucky."  
"She whispered to her husband, then he knelt down beside me. I overheard her, over the lovely gentleman talking with me. She wanted an 'older child' to 'act as a role model' and she mentioned twins."  
"Me and my brother."

"When we were very young, there was no clashes between us. You two were always quick to sidle up to Rana for whatever you liked, but I couldn't hold it against you both, you were four years younger than me, blessed with all your hearts desired." Apollo sighed. "My problems with you in particular began when you hit thirteen."

-x-x-

"So _all _of my friends are coming, right mom?" The thirteen year old was swaying on the heels of her feet in her mother's grand library.  
"Yes all of them." Apollo was walking around upstairs, he wasn't happy he had to be there, he wanted to go back to his father's, but he knew that his dad had to be with his daughter.

_Even if that daughter is the living poison spewed by her mother._

Things were going well, he had managed to resign himself to a small area of the house, formally his bedroom. He wasn't sure what it was intended to be at that moment, it looked like an empty void, there was no furniture, the walls were completely whitewashed, the carpet white, and the curtains were gone.

_Along with my personality..._

He simply put his headphones in his ears and flipped open his sketchbook, it had been a shame he had only been in the happy, complete household for less than a year. He never liked Sasha or her brother, but at least they were more well behaved and less derogatory towards him and their father. After all, when they came to see his dad now (he referred to him as dad to maintain an element of hope), they snuck into Apollo's room, defiled any art, books or notepads he had lying around and had even shoved his laptop out the window and let his finches free.

"Apollo! Get out!" She cried out, there was a boy fumbling around with her, at thirteen, he considered it strange that they even knew what kind of behaviour they were engaging in, let alone doing it. He pulled the boy from her, and without hesitation, he slapped her, hard.  
"You know what! Mum never loved you!" She snarled.  
"And you are simply her spawn filled with acid." And without hesitation, pushed her into the white room and locked the door behind him.  
"You're gonna fucking die Apollo!"  
"That's nice." He glanced to the teen boy, who he knew to be one of his little brother's friends. "Beat it. Runt."

When she got out, she viciously tried to savage Apollo, and had managed to claw opening a gaping hole in his neck with her nails. He had slapped his sister, and now he was about to do a lot worse, he knelt down beside her, and whispered in her ear.  
"You're going to be nothing more than a cheap Beverly Hills housewife, you know that? You're gonna be a little whore, who marries a footballer or a businessman, and then he's gonna cheat on you every single day of your pathetic life. Me, I'm gonna be a lawyer, I look forward to handling your divorce." And with that, he stood, pressed the first piece of cloth he could find to his neck, and summoned his father's chauffeur.

Later that day, when his father went to visit him at the hospital, Apollo expected to be told to leave, get out of this man's home and move in with his mentor, instead, the man shook his hand. Slowly and firmly, and thanked Apollo, he may have just saved his little sister without realising.

-x-x-

"You and I both know you deserve what I said that day. After you gave me that horrible gaping wound on my throat" Apollo wasn't sincere. "And you, and your pathetic sniveling little brother are both the same, always competing for mummy and daddy's attention, cause they're your only hope at life."  
"Shut the hell up!"  
"Oh and the key scratches on my first car, the missing front wheel off my moped, the red paint splashed in my apartment, the dead kitten killed by your car, my dead finches, the finches you set free, and the fire you made of my textbooks the day before my exam...you tried to make me pay for speaking the truth to you."

He was right there, she and her brother had agreed they were going to make their 'brother', although he wasn't worthy of such a title, pay for what he did to them. Not telling her what she needed to hear or anything that he said or did to her brother, but for taking daddy away, and leaving them with a drunkard of a mummy. _That's just the kind of people we are, Apollo._

"I have nothing more to say to you." Apollo couldn't stand the acid in his voice, the hate that oozed from every pore of his body when he spoke to this waste of life. "You don't deserve to live, you are nothing but the living embodiment of vanity, and for all you did to me, for all you caused me suffering, I hope karma gets back at you."  
"Yeah, but I'm rich."  
"You may have money, but you're still human. Still _mortal_. You aren't immune to the psychology of the human race. You'll see."

He reeled off the same instructions to her as he did to all the other people the tape had reached. She was angry as she took a pen and notepad, beginning to scrawl out the note for him. It was short, but a single line, and contained all the feelings she always needed to tell him. Then, as she put the pen back down, the anger drained from her, and she was left feeling hollow.

_If only I'd told you this sooner, Apollo._

The buzz disrupted her silent brooding, and she shook herself to reality, quickly ejecting the CD from the disc player she had been listening to and readying for George to open the door, she had reached the clinic.

She wasn't allowed to see her mother, that much was obvious, after all, any contact could undo any work her liquored up mother had managed so far. So she sighed heavily as the lady behind the reception wheeled the case up the long white hall, with Sasha watching from the double doors she entered through.

As she left, she turned and threw the disc into the dustbin. She never wanted to hear his voice again, to remind her.

When she returned home, there were only a few people left, littering the floors, curled up in embraces with another person they barely knew.

"This is the life of us rich teens huh? Well Apollo...I guess I am a whore after all." And instead of going to fetch Cal from her room, to finish his task and then finish what they started that morning, she swung a left a little early.

She searched intently for what she sought, finally, she found it, in the bottom left hand corner, on the far side of the room. She pulled the book from the case, admiring the beautiful leather bound books her mother had collected over her years of being a lawyer. She glanced down at her book, a book in genetics, she knew, deep down, there was still time.

She opened the book, and slowly began to read it aloud.

"Introduction. Genetics is the study of..." She would continue this for hours, which would merge to days, only stopping for food or water.

_There's still time to improve my grades. Low cut shirts and cute faces will only get me so far in life..._

-x-x-

Ema held the bottle in her hand. She took a calm, steady breathe as she poured another drink into the glass between her legs. Vodka was a good choice, to calm her nerves which were racing manically in her head, after all, vodka didn't smell.

People in the precinct had begun to think her weird, they couldn't remember the last time she went home, or even sat in her chair, she was more interested in sitting on the floor, cross legged, rubbing her temples in deep thought.

_There must be something here..._

* * *

A/N: Apologies again, let it be known here that I am an idiot for stopping writing, and I vow to never do it again. Lest I be lasered by giant grizzly bears that can fly.

Anyways, fave and review (Even if it's just to second me being lasered by giant flying grizzly bears!) ~ EvilWaffleS


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